Opto-Electronic Properties of Epoxy/Silicone Blend Based Thin Films

Abstract

\n Recently, the rise of two dimensional amorphous nanostructured thin films have ignited a big interest because of their intriguingly isotropic structural and physical properties leading to potential applications in the nano-optoelectronics. However, according to literature, most of optoelectronic properties are investigated on chalcogenides related heterostructures. This has motivated the present work aiming to provide a new platform for the fabrication, examination of the properties and the applications of 2D nanostructured thin films based on epoxy/silicone blend. Thin films of Epoxy/Silicone loaded with nitrogen doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) were prepared by sol-gel method and deposited on Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) glass substrates at room temperature. Further examination of optical properties aimed the investigation of optical pseudo-gap and Urbach energy and enabled the determination of processed films thickness based on Manifacier and Swanepol method. The results indicated that the unloaded thin films have a direct optical transition with a value of 3.61 eV followed by noticeable shift towards narrowing gaps depending on the loading rate. Urbach s energy is 0.19 eV for the unloaded thin films, and varies from 0.43 to 1.33 eV for the loaded thin films with increasing the rate of N-CNTs. It is inversely variable with the optical pseudo-gap. Finally, Epoxy/Silicone loaded with N-CNTs nanocomposites films can be developed as active layers with specific optical characteristics, giving the possibility to be used in electro-optical applications.