Growth and properties of the CuInS2 thin films produced by glancing angle deposition

We use the glancing angle deposition technique (GLAD) to grow CuInS2 thin films by a vacuum thermal method onto glass substrates. During deposition, the substrate temperature was maintained at 200 °C. Due to shadowing effect the oblique angle deposition technique can produce nanorods tilted toward the incident deposition flux. The evaporated atoms arrive at the growing interface at a fixed angle θ measured from the substrate normal. The substrate is rotated with rotational speed ω fixed at 0.033 rev s− 1. We show that the use of this growth technique leads to an improvement in the optical properties of the films. Indeed high absorption coefficients (105–3.105 cm− 1) in the visible range and near-IR spectral range are reached. In the case of the absence of the substrate rotation, scanning electron microscopy pictures show that the structure of the resulting film consists of nanocolumns that are progressively inclined towards the evaporation source as the incident angle was increased. If a rapid azimuthal rotation accompanies the substrate tilt, the resulting nanostructure is composed of an array of pillars normal to the substrate. The surface morphology show an improvement without presence of secondary phases for higher incident angles (θ > 60°).