Thin and transparent films of doped cadmium sulfide (CdS) were obtained on commercial glass substrates by Chemical Bath Deposition (CBD) technique. The films were doped with low concentration of Sn, and annealed in air at 300 °C for 45 min. The morphological characterization of the films with different amounts of dopant was made using SEM and EDAX analysis. Optical properties of the films were evaluated by measuring transmittance using the UV-vis spectrophotometer. A comparison of the results revealed that lower concentration of Sn doping improves transmittance of CdS films and makes them suitable for application as window layer of CdTe/CIGS solar cells.
Two different concentrations of CdCl(2) and (NH(2))(2)CS were used to prepare CdS thin films, to be deposited on glass substrate by chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique. CdCl(2) (0.000312 M and 0.000625 M) was employed as a source of Cd(2+) while (NH(2))(2)CS (0.00125 M and 0.000625 M) for S(2-) at a constant bath temperature of 70 °C. Adhesion of the deposited films was found to be very good for all the solution concentrations of both reagents. The films were air-annealed at a temperature between 200 °C to 360 °C for one hour. The minimum thickness was observed to be 33.6 nm for film annealed at 320 °C. XRD analyses reveal that the films were cubic along with peaks of hexagonal phase for all film samples. The crystallite size of the films decreased from 41.4 nm to 7.4 nm with the increase of annealing temperature for the CdCl(2) (0.000312 M). Optical energy band gap (E(g)), Urbach energy (E(u)) and absorption coefficient (α) have been calculated from the transmission spectral data. These parameters have been discussed as a function of annealing temperature and solution concentration. The best transmission (about 97%) was obtained for the air-annealed films at higher temperature at CdCl(2) (0.000312 M).
Three novel natural amino acid-derived sodium L-2-(1-imidazolyl) alkanoic acids (IZSs), namely, sodium 2-(1H-imidazol-1-yl)-4-methylpentanoate (IZS-L), sodium 2-(1H-imidazol-1-yl)-3-phenylpropanoate (IZS-P), and sodium 2-(1H-imidazol-1-yl)-4-(methylthio)butanoate (IZS-M), were investigated as corrosion inhibitors. The IZSs were synthesized following the green chemistry principles, and their structure was characterized using FTIR and NMR techniques. The corrosion study results reveal that a moderate concentration of IZSs (having low solution conductivity) showed potential corrosion inhibition for mild steel in artificial seawater. At longer immersion, IZS-P forms a uniform protective film and exhibits the potential inhibition efficiency of 82.46% at 8.4 mmol L-1. Tafel polarization results reveal that IZS-P and IZS-M act as mixed types with an anodic predominantly corrosion inhibitor. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy results signify that IZSs inhibit mild steel corrosion through the formation of an inhibitor film on the metal surface, which was further confirmed by the FTIR, SEM, EDX, and XPS studies. DFT result shows that in IZS-P, the benzylic group (-CH2-Ph) has greater electron distribution compared to isobutyl (-CH2CH(CH3)2) in IZS-L and methythioethyl group (-CH2CH2SCH3) which supported the corrosion inhibition performance at longer immersion [IZS-P (82.46%) > IZS-M (67.19%) > IZS-L (24.77%)].