Abstract
Thin films of Tb-doped CdO were grown on FTO substrates using the sol-gel-spin coater technique. XRD studies confirmed the polycrystalline cubic growth of the films with a (200) preferential orientation. XRD analysis was used to estimate the crystallite sizes, dislocation density, and microstrain values, and found that they are highly dependent on the doping percentage. Homogeneous distributions of the nano-gains were observed from the AFM studies. Energy-dispersive spectroscopy and mapping analyses were used for the uniform elemental composition confirmation. All the films displayed high transmission reaching nearly 80% in the visible spectrum and the effect of Tb doping was very clear by corresponding systematic increase in intensities. The direct band-gap values were estimated from the Tauc plots and are found to be highly tunable based on the doping percentage, which was varying between 2.79 and 2.91eV. The refractive index and extinction coefficient values are lies between 1.8 and 2.5 and 0.44 to 0.82. The (1) values are found to be varying between of 0.05 to 0.45 within the range 1-4eV. This suggests all the linear and nonlinear optical properties of the present samples can be tailored for the various applications by the doping.