Development and characterization of SnTe:Al nanostructures for enhanced solar absorption

SnTe based material is considered a leading lead-free replacement of the PbTe based thermoelectric materials to addressing the global energy crisis. Our findings show that study the effect of Al-doping on electronic and structure properties of SnTe at concentrations of 2 and 4% are obtained with vacuum evaporation. The structures of the poly-crystalline thin film are observed by X-ray diffraction pattern, Grain size increased with Al content. The studied structures are all cubic crystalline structure. The Arrhenius relation is used to determine the activation energy of SnTe nanostructures within the temperature range (313–423 K). The semiconductors nature of the SnTe nanostructures and the carrier concentrations are determined by Hall effect, the SnTe nanostructures shows p-type semiconductors, and the Electrical properties show a rise of the carrier concentration when the Al concentrations increases. We achieved a maximum conversion efficiency of 1.5 at Al 4% nanostructures, which is greater than that of pure SnTe. This work demonstrates that Al -doping can increase grain size, resulting increase in conversion efficiency of the SnTe thin film.