Abstract
Lead iodide is one of the best room temperature radiation detector including applications in solar cell and photodetectors. Herein, we have fabricated the high-quality thin films of pure and Nd:PbI
2
through a simple and cost-effective spin-coating route and investigated their key properties. X-ray diffraction study confirms the growth orientation of all films along
c
-axis/(001) plane and single phase of 2H-PbI
2
Polytypes with the crystallites of size in range of 21–31 nm. Further confirmation of growth and phase was carried out through FT-Raman analysis. EDX and SEM mapping was also carried out to confirm the Nd doping and its homogeneity in the films. SEM provides a clear view on the surface morphology of grown films and grain size was found in the range of 54–71 nm. Optical measurement shows high transparency, i.e., ~ 90% for grown films in visible to NIR region. The direct bandgap is observed to be enhanced with Nd doping from 2.45 to 2.58 eV; however, there is another bandgap which shows reduction with doping from 2.30 to 2.24 eV. This shows the possibility of existence of sub-energy bandgap in PbI
2
. The stable value of refractive index is evaluated ~ 2. The value of εʹ is found to varies from 4 to 27 in the energy range of 1–2.5 eV. Optical limiting behavior of all films was also studied at two lasers of
λ
= 532 nm and 632.8 nm. Moreover, a device fabrication was done for electrical study and found the resistivity increases from 5.14 × 10
8
Ω-cm for pure to 1.18 × 10
9
Ω-cm for 5% Nd-doped PbI
2
.