Single-material multilayer ZnS as anti-reflective coating for solar cell applications

Multilayer Zinc Sulfide (ZnS) is a promising low cost antireflective coating for solar cell applications, in this work; thin films with novel structure containing cubic and hexagonal phases were successfully deposited by thermal evaporation technique with three different layers. XRD analysis confirms the existence of both phases and high specific surface area. AFM analysis reveals that films with three layers have lower roughness and average grain size than other films. The optical measurements obtained by UV-vis, the calculated values of refractive index and reflectivity using some well known refractive index-band gap relations indicate that thin films with triple layer TL-ZnS have lower refractive index and reflectivity than other films, empirical equations were suggested and show the quantum confinement effects on band gap and reflectivity.