Dispensability of the conventional Tauc’s plot for accurate bandgap determination from UV–vis optical diffuse reflectance data

The use of the conventional Tauc’s method to determine optical bandgap energy from UV–vis spectroscopy data has been overemphasized for decades. However, a misuse of the Tauc’s formula in conjunction with the Kubelka-Munk function to determine the bandgap energy of semiconductors from diffuse reflectance data can lead to erroneous estimates. Particularly, large errors can be associated with computing values of the ordinate using the Tauc-Kubelka-Munk relationship for diffuse reflectance to produce Tauc’s plot. To address this apparent error, the present paper shows that the reflectance versus photon energy plot for bandgap estimation from UV–vis diffuse reflectance data can be employed to obtain reasonable…

• MO
  Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia

  Award: FRGS/1/2020/STG05/USM/02/4
• US
  Universiti Sains Malaysia