The influence of deposition conditions on structural properties of PbI 2

Abstract

The effect of deposition environment conditions on the electrical and structural properties of deposited PbI2 layers were studied. The layers were deposited from solution under dark and room light illumination with and without applying magnetic field. XRD, electrical, and photo-electrical properties were measured at room temperature. An increase in the grain size versus the platelet area was noticed.The electrical properties revealed a dependence on deposition conditions. Dark conductivity increases from 1.7 × 10-10 to 5 × 10-9 (Ωcm)-1 when deposition was carried out in darkness. A gain factor (the ratio between photoconductivity and dark conductivity) of (23) was obtained. The results indicate that the increase in electrical conductivity is mainly due to the plane 001, where the average number of grain boundaries in this plane sharply decreases when deposition takes place in darkness. On the other hand, the increase in photoconductivity could be due to the decrease in the recombination of free carriers along the grain boundaries. © 2009 A. M. Mousa and N. J. Al-rubaie.