Comparison of the optical and morphological properties of CdO thin films obtained by different methods

Abstract In the present work, transparent cadmium oxide (CdO) thin films prepared by using different methods (spray pyrolysis and sol–gel techniques) on the glass substrate. Optical and morphological properties of these films were compared. For this reason, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and UV–VIS spectrometry were used. The XRD analysis reveals that the films were polycrystalline with cubic structure. The optical band gap of the films was obtained 2.46 eV and 2.13 eV for spray pyrolysis and Sol-Gel methods, respectively. AFM micrographs is evident that the surface is highly uniform and show very low mean roughness values for the CdO surface. Surface roughness values were calculated 39.1 nm and 64.9 nm for spray pyrolysis and sol–gel method, respectively.