Document Type : Regular Articles
Authors
1
Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Sohag University, 82524 Sohag, Egypt
2
Physics Department, College of Science, Jouf University, Al-Jouf, Sakaka, P.O. Box 2014, Sakaka, Saudi Arabi
3
Thin Films and Nanotechnology Lab, Physics Department, Faculty of Science, Sohag University, 82524, Sohag, Egypt
Abstract
For this study, we used thermal evaporation to synthesize thin films of manganese sulfide (MnS) with a layer of zinc and silver pre-coating. A range of methods, including UV/VIS/NIR spectrophotometry, EDX, X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and the two-probe technique, were employed to examine the structural, morphological, optical, and electrical characteristics of the as-deposited and annealed films. Additionally, the films were annealed for 20 min at 300°C. Numerous parameters were found, including the dispersion parameters, activation energy, mobility, refractive index, extinction coefficient, Urbach energy, dielectric constants, and optical energy gap. The pure MnS, metal/MnS, and annealed metal/MnS films had an amorphous structure. There was a direct allowed transition between the films with different pre-coating layers. The energy gaps were 3.17 eV for MnS, 2.57 eV for Ag/MnS, 2.52 eV for Zn/MnS, 1.9 eV for annealed Ag/MnS, and 2.6 eV for annealed Zn/MnS. Besides, the pre-coating layer affected the refractive index dispersion of the films. In addition, the addition of the pre-coating metal resulted in lower film resistivity, indicating semiconductor behavior in the samples. Finally, we tested deposited and annealed Ag/MnS films for sensing I2 and Co2. As a result, deposited Ag/MnS has a promising future for gas sensing applications. In addition, we tested annealed Zn/MnS for organic pollutant decomposition, which demonstrated high efficiency of approximately 81%.
Keywords
Main Subjects
)
View on SCiNiTO