Effects of Vacuum and Air Annealing on Structural, Morphological, Optical, and Electrical Properties of Multilayer CdZnS Thin Films for Photovoltaic and Optoelectronic Applications

[Image: see text] Multilayer CdZnS (CZS) thin film was deposited on soda lime glass substrates. After deposition, the films were vacuum and air annealed at 100 °C, 200 °C, 300 and 400 °C for 1 h. Effects of vacuum and air annealing on structural, morphological, optical, and electrical properties of multilayer CZS films with increasing annealing temperature (IAT) were studied. The structural analysis revealed that the films were polycrystalline with hexagonal structure having a prominent/intensive peak along the (002) plane at 300 and 400 °C. The crystallite size of nanoparticles increased from 18.4 to 20.5 nm under air annealing and from 18.4 to 26.9 nm under vacuum annealing, showing the significance of annealing on nanoparticle grain growth. According to morphological analysis, the multilayer technique provides homogeneous film distribution over the substrate. The transmittance graphs of films revealed that it increased up to 92% in the visible and NIR regions under vacuum annealing and up to 52% under air annealing. Vacuum annealing enhanced the band gap energies more significantly than air annealing. The electrical resistivity increased with IAT, showing that structural, morphological, optical, and electrical properties of the multilayer thin films of CZS were strongly dependent on vacuum and air annealing.