Comparative Study for the Electrodeposited Cadmium Chalcogenide by Potentiostatic and Potentiodynamic Methods for Electrochemical Reduction of CO2

Abstract

: Electrochemically synthesized cadmium sulfide (CdS) on cupper-modified substrate from an acidic solution containing Cd 2+ and S 2 O 32-ions at 20 o C has been produced with potentiostatic and potentiodynamic methods utilizing a three-electrode system. The prepared films have been characterized utilizing X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). X-ray diffraction analyses demonstrate that, under our optimized conditions, the CdS thin films deposited using both methods exhibit a pure and hexagonal structure. The electrodeposited CdS was found to behave as a p-type semiconductor, which was examined and demonstrated via the Mott-Schottky measurement. Depending upon the obtained data in this work, it was discovered that the electrodeposition techniques affect the morphology of the electrodeposited material (confirmed by SEM), carrier concentrations, thickness δ SC of the space-charge layer, the energy gap (E g ), as well as the sensitivity towards CO 2 electro-reduction.