7.1% efficient co-electroplated Cu2ZnSnS4 thin film solar cells with sputtered CdS buffer layers

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 550-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiahua Tao ◽  
Junfeng Liu ◽  
Leilei Chen ◽  
Huiyi Cao ◽  
Xiankuan Meng ◽  
...  

Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) thin films with fine control over composition and pure phase were fabricated by sulfurization of co-electroplated Cu–Zn–Sn–S precursors.

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongxia Wang

The research in thin film solar cells has been dominated by light absorber materials based on CdTe and Cu(In,Ga)Se2(CIGS) in the last several decades. The concerns of environment impact of cadmium and the limited availability of indium in those materials have driven the research towards developing new substitute light absorbers made from earth abundant, environment benign materials. Cu2ZnSnS4(CZTS) semiconductor material has emerged as one of the most promising candidates for this aim and has attracted considerable interest recently. Significant progress in this relatively new research area has been achieved in the last three years. Over 130 papers on CZTS have been published since 2007, and the majority of them are on the preparation of CZTS thin films by different methods. This paper, will review the wide range of techniques that have been used to deposit CZTS semiconductor thin films. The performance of the thin film solar cells using the CZTS material will also be discussed.


2008 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 125-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rong Fuh Louh ◽  
Warren Wu

Chemical bath deposition (CBD) is a fairly simple synthetic route to prepare II-VI semicondutive zinc sulfide thin films, which can be prepared on the flat surface of glass or silicon wafer substrates in the solution containing the precursors of zinc and sulfur ions in terms of ambient conditions of varying acidity. This study particularly aims at the growth dependence and optical property of ZnS thin films in the CBD process by different experiment parameters, whereas we intend to choose suitable types of zinc ionic precursors to be coupled with various CBD parameters such as reaction temperature and time, precursor concentration, types and complexing agents as well as post-deposition heat treatment conditions. Addition of different concentration of ethylenediamine, ammonium sulfate, sodium citrate and hydrazine in the CBD reaction process was used to control the adequate growth rate of ZnS thin films. As a consequence, the rapid thermal annealing was employed to enhance the film uniformity and thickness evenness, transmittance and the energy gap of ZnS samples. The results would lead to a potential application of buffer layer for the Cu (In,Ga)Se2 based thin film solar cells. The analytic instrument including SEM, AFM, UV-VIS were used to examine the CBD-derived nanosized ZnS buffer layers for the thin film solar cells. The ZnS thin films prepared by the chemical bath deposition in this study results in film thickness of 80 ~ 100 nm, high transmittance of 80~85% and the energy gap of 3.89 ~ 3.98 eV.


RSC Advances ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (18) ◽  
pp. 9118-9125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Si-Nae Park ◽  
Shi-Joon Sung ◽  
Dae-Ho Son ◽  
Dae-Hwan Kim ◽  
Mungunshagai Gansukh ◽  
...  

Effective adding/removal of organic chemicals to/from CZTS precursor thin films for preparing uniform CZTS thin films with optimal photovoltaic properties was achieved by pre-annealing of CZTS precursors containing thiourea.


2012 ◽  
Vol 182-183 ◽  
pp. 237-240
Author(s):  
Nian Jing Ji ◽  
Ke Gao Liu ◽  
Zhong Quan Ma

CZTS thin film, a potential candidate for application as absorber layer in thin film solar cells, has drawn much attention in these years due to its excellent photoelectric performance and nontoxic components. It provides a brief description of the development of CZTS thin film for solar cells, and surveys several methods of depositing CZTS films, then introduces the crystal structure of CZTS which is a problem for composition ratio affecting the properties of CZTS thin films. Here we also outline the development and the structure of solar cells based on CZTS thin films.


2017 ◽  
Vol 701 ◽  
pp. 55-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Lianbo Zhao ◽  
Kailiang Zhang ◽  
Heng Sun ◽  
Yanqing Lai ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-141
Author(s):  
Jingyuan Zhang ◽  
Yusheng Liu ◽  
Jianing Song ◽  
Mu Zhang ◽  
Xiaodong Li

The Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) thin films were fabricated by the direct solution coating method using a novel non-particulate ink. The ink was formulated using ethanol as the solvent and 1,2-diaminopropane as the complex-ing agent. The pure phase kesterite films with good crystallinity, large-sized crystals and excellent electrical properties were prepared by the spin-coating deposition technique using the homogeneous and air-stable ink. It was found that the subsequent pre-treatment temperature had an influence on the film crystallinity and electrical properties. The best film was obtained by pre-treating the spin-coated film at 250 °C, and then post-annealing at 560 °C. The film shows a narrow bandgap of 1.52 eV and excellent electrical properties, with a resistivity of 0.07 Ocm, carrier concentration of 3.0 x 1017 cm-3, and mobility of 4.15 cm2 V-1 s-1. The novel non-particulate ink is promising for printing high quality CZTS thin films as absorber layers of thin film solar cells.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guanggen Zeng ◽  
Xia Hao ◽  
Shengqiang Ren ◽  
Lianghuan Feng ◽  
Qionghua Wang

The application of thinner cadmium sulfide (CdS) window layer is a feasible approach to improve the performance of cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin film solar cells. However, the reduction of compactness and continuity of thinner CdS always deteriorates the device performance. In this work, transparent Al2O3 films with different thicknesses, deposited by using atomic layer deposition (ALD), were utilized as buffer layers between the front electrode transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and CdS layers to solve this problem, and then, thin-film solar cells with a structure of TCO/Al2O3/CdS/CdTe/BC/Ni were fabricated. The characteristics of the ALD-Al2O3 films were studied by UV–visible transmittance spectrum, Raman spectroscopy, and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The light and dark J–V performances of solar cells were also measured by specific instrumentations. The transmittance measurement conducted on the TCO/Al2O3 films verified that the transmittance of TCO/Al2O3 were comparable to that of single TCO layer, meaning that no extra absorption loss occurred when Al2O3 buffer layers were introduced into cells. Furthermore, due to the advantages of the ALD method, the ALD-Al2O3 buffer layers formed an extremely continuous and uniform coverage on the substrates to effectively fill and block the tiny leakage channels in CdS/CdTe polycrystalline films and improve the characteristics of the interface between TCO and CdS. However, as the thickness of alumina increased, the negative effects of cells were gradually exposed, especially the increase of the series resistance (Rs) and the more serious “roll-over” phenomenon. Finally, the cell conversion efficiency (η) of more than 13.0% accompanied by optimized uniformity performances was successfully achieved corresponding to the 10 nm thick ALD-Al2O3 thin film.


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