Studies on electrodeposition of zinc selenide and zinc telluride and their photoelectrochemical cell behavior

Elsayed, E; Shenouda, Atef Y

doi:10.21608/ejchem.2021.100720.4679

Studies on electrodeposition of zinc selenide and zinc telluride and their photoelectrochemical cell behavior

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

E Elsayed ¹
Atef Y Shenouda ²

¹ Central metallurgical research and Development institute

² Central Metallurgical Research and Development Institute

10.21608/ejchem.2021.100720.4679

Abstract

The electrochemical behavior of Zn2+, Se4+ and Te4+ ions was investigated using cyclic voltammetry measurements. The electrodeposition of zinc selenide (ZnSe) and zinc telluride (ZnTe) was conducted on titanium sheet substrates using the potentiostatic technique.The electrodeposition of zinc selenide occurred at a potential of -0.5 V while zinc telluride was deposited at a potential of -0.7 V using mercuric-mercurios sulphate electrode (MSE; Hg/ Hg2SO4/ H2SO4) as reference electrode. The X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) data revealed that, the characteristic peaks of the cubic system structure for and zinc selenide and zinc telluride are formed with well cubic structural phases. The transmission is measured by UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometer. The transmission edge observed during the UV-VIS-NIR spectra measurement occurred at 660 nm for the electrodeposited ZnSe, while the transmission of ZnTe occurred at 750 nm. In addition, the efficiencies of the photoelectrochemical solar cells are 5.1% and 7.1% for ZnSe and ZnTe, and the energy gap values are well detected at 2.5 and 2.27 eV for ZnSe and ZnTe, respectively. The electrochemical impedance spectra showed that zinc telluride is more conductive than the zinc selenide.

Keywords