The characterization of copper oxide with different molar concentration using sol-gel spin coating

The objective of this research is to evaluate the effect of different molar concentration of the copper oxide (CuO) thin films deposited using spin-coating technique. The CuO thin films were deposited on 500μm quartz substrates. The molar concentration of CuO solutions used were 0.3M, 0.35M, 0.4M, 0.45M and 0.5M were prepared using sol-gel method. These solutions were formed by dissolving copper acetate powder into isopropanol, diethanolamine and polyethylene glycol. All samples were annealed at 600°C for 1 hour in a furnace. The electrical properties were measured by two point probe to check thin film resistivity. The electrical measurements showed that current increased with the concentration. The thicknesses were performed using the surface profiler while the surfaces morphology were characterized using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM). The films surfaces were smooth with uniformly distributed grains. The optical transmittances were measured using UV-Vis spectrometer and the reading decreased with concentration.