Fabrication and characterization of bismuth-telluride based thin films by electrodeposition

Abstract

This paper describes the fabrication and characterization of bismuth telluride (Bi-Te), bismuth selenide (Bi-Se) and bismuth telluride selenium (Bi-Te-Se) thin films by electrodeposition. We examined the relationship between the mole ratio in the solution and the thermoelectric and structural properties of thin films. The thermoelectric properties, in terms of the electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient and power factor, were measured at room temperature. Then, the structural properties such as surface morphology and atomic composition were analyzed. The power factor of Bi-Te, Bi-Se and Bi-Te-Se thin films were achieved 3.1, 13.3 and 10.3  W/cm/K 2 , respectively. Although resulting performances were relatively high compared to those of thin films prepare using electrodeposition, there is still room for improvement to optimize the atomic composition of the thin