Wide Band Gap Nanostructured Marshite and Digenite Films Deposited by Automatic SILAR Method

In this work, an automatic successive ionic layer adsorption and the reaction (SILAR) method was developed and approved to produce nanostructured films of two stable wide band gap semiconductors from the cuprous sulfide and cuprous iodide families. Studies of morphology, chemical composition and optical properties have shown that the semiconductor films obtained here on glass substrates are marshite and digenite. The approach presented here is highly manageable because it is fully automated. Additional advantages of the automatic SILAR method are scalability, low cost and availability, since a conventional 3D printer was used to create the process setup, and all operations for deposition of semiconductor layers were pre-programmed and carried out at atmospheric pressure and room temperature. It has been shown that the automatic SILAR method allows one to change the type of semiconductor simply by changing one aqueous solution used during deposition, so it is promising to create various semiconductor heterostructures for future micro- and nanoelectronics.