Exciton dynamics of CdS thin films produced by chemical bath deposition and DC pulse sputtering

Exciton dynamics of CdS films have been investigated using ultrafast laser spectroscopy with an emphasis on understanding defect-related recombination. Two types of CdS films were deposited on glass substrates via direct current pulse sputtering (DCPS) and chemical bath deposition (CBD) techniques. The films displayed distinct morphological, optical, and structural properties. Their exciton and charge carrier dynamics within the first 1 ns following photoexcitation were characterized by femotosecond pump probe spectroscopy. A singular value decomposition (SVD) global fitting technique was employed to extract the lifetime and wavelength dependence of transient species. The excited electrons of the DCPS sample decays through 1.8, 8, 65, and 450 ps time constants which were attributed to donor level electron trapping, valence band (VB) → conduction band (CB) recombination, shallow donor recombination, and deep donor recombination, respectively. The CBD sample shows time constants of 6, 65, and 450 ps which were attributed to CB → VB recombination, sulfur vacancy (VS) recombination, and VS → oxygen interstitial (Oi) donor-acceptor pair (DAP) recombination, respectively. It was found that the DCPS deposition technique produces films with lower defect density and improved carrier dynamics, which are important for high performance solar cell applications.