Synthesis of CuO thin films based on Taguchi design for solar absorber

In this research, the effect of the control condition on the physical properties of Copper Oxide (CuO) thin-film has been successfully performed through the sol-gel procedure followed by spin coating technique on a glass substrate. Taguchi model was reported to find the most prominent factor on the deposits process of CuO thin coat with an L9 (33) orthogonal array. Besides, from XRD, we deduce the texture coefficient used to determine the S/N ratio. The selected influential parameters are: concentration of Copper (II) ions "Cu2+", preheating temperature TP and the final heat-treatment temperature Tf. The results showed that the obtained crystals exhibit a uniform and smooth morphology. The energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) exploits the chemical composition of the prepared films. In addition, the Absorption spectra by UV-vis analysis of the obtained thin films reveal high absorbance in the visible range. In fact, the CuO films showed optimal gap energy of 1.47 eV. However, the prepared thin CuO films by the optimization of the Taguchi model lead to the enhancement of the optical properties and suggested that CuO thin film could be one of the potential solar cell absorbers in PV devices.