Variations of ionization potential and electron affinity as a function of surface orientation: The case of orthorhombic SnS

We investigated the dependence of absolute SnS band-edge energies on surface orientation using density functional theory and GW method for all surfaces with Miller indices -3 ≤ h; k; l ≤ 3 and found variations as large as 0.9 eV as a function of (hkl). Variations of this magnitude may affect significantly the performance of photovoltaic devices based on polycrystalline SnS thin-films and, in particular, may contribute to the relatively low measured open circuit voltage of SnS solar cells. X-ray diffraction measurements confirm that our thermally evaporated SnS films exhibit a wide distribution of different grain orientations, and the results of Kelvin force microscopy support the theoretically predicted variations of the absolute band-edge energies.