Preparation and study of thickness dependent electrical characteristics of zinc sulfide thin films

Zinc sulfide thin films have been deposited onto glass substrates by chemical bath deposition. The various deposition parameters such as volume of sulfide ion source, pH of bath, deposition time, temperature etc are optimized. Thin films of ZnS with different thicknesses of 76–332 nm were prepared by changing the deposition time from 6–20 h at 30° C temperature. The effect of film thickness on structural and electrical properties was studied. The electrical resistivity was decreased from 1.83 × 10⁵ Ω-cm to 0.363 × 10⁵ Ω-cm as film thickness decreased from 332 nm to 76 nm. The structural and activation energy studies support this decrease in the resistivity due to improvement in crystallinity of the films which would increase the charge carrier mobility and decrease in defect levels with increase in the thickness.