CuO is a promising candidate for application as material for solar cell fabrication owing to its excellent optical properties with selective solar absorbency and low thermal emittance. In the present work, CuO thin films have been successfully coated by spin coating technique using copper acetate as precursor. The precursor was prepared by sol gel method. Single layered, three layered and five layered CuO thin films were spin coated at 2500 rpm for 10 sec and annealed at 550oC. The as-synthesized CuO thin films were subjected to FTIR, UV-Vis, field dependent and temperature dependent conductivity and SEM studies. The FTIR confirmed the presence of Cu-O stretching vibrations in all the three as-synthesized samples. The UV-Vis spectra of all the three samples were similar while exhibiting a slight increase in intensity upon increase in number of coating layers. The temperature dependent conductivity study confirmed the semiconducting nature of the films in all cases and the five layered films recorded the least activation energy. The three layer coated CuO thin films showed a significance rise in photocurrent over dark current. The three layered CuO thin films exhibited highly uniform homogenous layers of reduced particle size and improved texture. Thus three layered CuO thin films could be considered as good candidates for harvest of solar energy for solar cell applications.
