Impurity effects in Cu$_2$O

Abstract

The doping of wide gap semiconductors is an interesting problem both from the scientific and technological point of view. A well known example of this problem is the doping of Cu$_2$O. The only element which has produced an order of magnitude increase in the conductivity of Cu$_2$O bulk samples is chlorine, as previously reported by us and others. However the solar cells produced with this material do not show any improvement in performances because of the reduction in the minority carrier diffusion length. In this paper we investigate the effect of other impurities in order to check their possible use as dopants and to assess their effects on the minority carrier diffusion length. Seven impurities have been introduced by evaporation on the starting copper sheet before the oxidation used to produce Cu$_2$O: chromium (Cr), iron (Fe), silver (Ag), silicon (Si), sodium (Na), sulfur (S) and phosphorus (P). The experiments show that a 20 ppm of concentration of these dopants does not give any relevant effect neither on the resistivity, nor on the mobility. The effect on minority carrier diffusion length is also negligible except for sodium which produces a slight degradation of the samples.