Energy band alignment at Cu2O/ZnO heterojunctions characterized by in situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Abstract

With the increasing interest in Cu2O-based devices for photovoltaic applications, the energy band alignment at the Cu2O/ZnO heterojunction has received more and more attention. In this work, a high-quality Cu2O/ZnO heterojunction is fabricated on a c-Al2O3 substrate by laser-molecular beam epitaxy, and the energy band alignment is determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The valence band of ZnO is found to be 1.97 eV below that of Cu2O. A type-II band alignment exists at the Cu2O/ZnO heterojunction with a resulting conduction band offset of 0.77 eV, which is especially favorable for enhancing the efficiency of Cu2O/ZnO solar cells.