We have studied the effect of sodium on the electrical properties of Cu₂ZnSnS₄ (CZTS) single crystal by using temperature dependence of Hall effect measurement. The sodium substitution on the cation site in CZTS is observed from the increasing of unit-cell size by powder X-ray diffraction. Sodium increases the effective hole concentration and makes the thermal activation energy smaller. The degree of compensation decreases with sodium incorporation, thus the hole mobility is enhanced. We revealed that sodium is important dopant in CZTS to control the electrical properties.

Clearly understanding elementary growth processes that depend on surface reconstruction is essential to controlling vapor-phase epitaxy more precisely. In this study, ammonia chemical adsorption on GaN(0001) reconstructed surfaces under metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) conditions (3Ga-H and N_ad-H + Ga-H on a 2 × 2 unit cell) is investigated using steepest-entropy-ascent quantum thermodynamics (SEAQT). SEAQT is a thermodynamic-ensemble based, first-principles framework that can predict the behavior of non-equilibrium processes, even those far from equilibrium where the state evolution is a combination of reversible and irreversible dynamics. SEAQT is an ideal choice to handle this problem on a first-principles basis since the chemical adsorption process starts from a highly non-equilibrium state. A result of the analysis shows that the probability of adsorption on 3Ga-H is significantly higher than that on N_ad-H + Ga-H. Additionally, the growth temperature dependence of these adsorption probabilities and the temperature increase due to the heat of reaction is determined. The non-equilibrium thermodynamic modeling applied can lead to better control of the MOVPE process through the selection of preferable reconstructed surfaces. The modeling also demonstrates the efficacy of DFT-SEAQT coupling for determining detailed non-equilibrium process characteristics with a much smaller computational burden than would be entailed with mechanics-based, microscopic-mesoscopic approaches.