Morphological and electric characterizations of a nanometric materialα-CuMoO4for photovoltaic application

Abstract

The work presented in this publication concerns the elaboration by soft chemistry and the structural, morphological and physical characterizations of semiconductors with metallic Oxides CuMoO4. Particularly, we study the caking of powders of molybdate of copper: conventional sintering and Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS). The characterization by X-rays diffraction analyses (DRX) and scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) show that the ceramic obtained by SPS at 300°C for 5 min hasa densificationof 98.0 %, superior to that of the ceramic sintered in a conventional way (94.8 %), with a grainsize (0.2μm) significantlylower than thatobtained by conventional sintering(2.0 μm).The study of the electric properties by the method of the current-voltage measurements (I-V) of the nondoped ceramic CuMoO4showsonone hand, the semiconductor character of the material and on the other hand, a clear improvement of the thermal activationof the carriers in the case of the ceramic obtained by SPS at 300°C. The width of the forbidden gap (Eg) deducted from these measurements is 1.8 ± 0.1 eV.