Superior Conductivity of Transparent ZnO/MoS 2 Composite Films for Optoelectronic and Solar Cell Applications.

The use of transparent conductive oxides in optoelectronics created a revolution where new-generation materials with high transmittance, low sheet resistance values, durability, and portability can be achieved without decreasing efficiency or increasing costs. Transparent ZnO/MoS 2 sandwich-structured conductive composite films were produced in this study via the sol-gel method, which is considered the most efficient method due to its simple process and low cost. The crystal structure properties of ZnO/MoS 2 were characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns. The crystal sizes of ZnO films doped with different amounts of MoS 2 were determined. A UV-visible absorption spectrometer was used to perform the spectroscopic analysis of the film. The area under the absorption curve and the full width of the half-maxima of absorbance data were calculated. Using these values, the optimum amount of MoS 2 was determined for the best additive distribution. In addition, in order to determine the best transparent conductive material, resistance values measured via the four-point probe method were compared for different MoS 2 additive amounts. The optical and electrical characterizations of transparent ZnO/MoS 2 conductive oxide films were investigated. According to the parameters obtained via UV-vis spectroscopy, XRD, and four-point probe measurements, the most effective dispersion that exhibits a low width ratio and high resonance ratio was found for ZnO/MoS 2 with a doping amount of 4 mg, the crystallite size of the films was found to be within the range of 21.5 and 24.6 nm, and these observations demonstrated a figure-of-merit value of more than 4.8 × 10 -2 with respect to these sandwich-structured films. Compared to the values of previous studies on various transparent ZnO-doped conductive oxide materials, it is possible to claim that these new films have a structure that is very similar to the transparent conductivity characteristics of other films, and they may even be superior relative to some MoS 2 amounts.