Cubic‐structured tin selenide thin film as a novel solar cell absorber

Tin selenide thin film with a simple cubic crystalline structure (SnSe‐CUB) of unit cell dimension a = 11.9632 Å is obtained via chemical deposition on a tin sulfide (SnS‐CUB) thin film base layer of simple cubic structure of a = 11.5873 Å. The SnSe‐CUB films obtained this way are thermally stable while heating to 300 °C. Its optical band gap is 1.4 eV. A thin film of 200 nm in thickness of this material in a solar cell may lead to a light generated current density of 23 mA cm−2 and a maximum of 29 mA cm−2. Thin film of SnSe‐CUB possesses p‐type electrical conductivity of 5 × 10−5 Ω−1 cm−1, which is three orders of magnitude lower than that of SnSe films of orthorhombic crystalline structure. Overall, these characteristics make SnSe‐CUB thin film a novel solar cell absorber material.