Structural and electrical properties of Cu2Zn(Sn1−xSix)S4 (x = 0, x = 0.5) materials for photovoltaic applications

Abstract This work studied the electrical effects of the substitution of tin with silicon on p-type Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 semiconductor compounds. To this purpose, two samples, namely Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 and Cu 2 ZnSn 0.5 Si 0.5 S 4 , were prepared. The samples purities and homogeneities were characterized by both Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy and powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD). We observed that the temperature dependence of the electrical conductivity of materials exhibits a crossover from T −1/4 to T −1 dependence in the temperature range between 130 and 140 K. The characteristic temperature ( T 0,Mott ), the hopping distance ( R hop ), the average hopping energy ( Δ hop ), the localization length ( ξ ) and the density of states ( N ( E F )), were determined, and their values were discussed within the models describing conductivity in p-type semiconductor.