Open AccessTraces of iron impurities in copper sources can be a poison to Cu(In, Ga)Se 2 solar cells
Author(s) -
Ma Zengyang,
Gao Duoqi,
Zhang Junjun,
Liu Xinxin,
Li Jianmin,
Gong Junbo,
Xiao Xudong
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
nano select
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2688-4011
DOI - 10.1002/nano.202100296
Subject(s) - copper indium gallium selenide solar cells , copper , impurity , materials science , solar cell , metallurgy , band gap , diffusion , analytical chemistry (journal) , optoelectronics , chemistry , physics , environmental chemistry , organic chemistry , thermodynamics
It has been widely accepted that the diffusion of iron from stainless steel substrates has detrimental impact on Cu(In, Ga)Se 2 (CIGS) solar cell performance. However, the effect of traces of iron impurities in copper sources can be neglected all the time. In this work, 99.97% purity copper which contains only 0.03% iron was used to fabricate CIGS devices. Compared to the copper of 99.99% purity, it has been showed that this 0.03% difference in purity can lead to a 70% efficiency improvement for CuGaSe 2 (CGS), 35% efficiency improvement for normal band gap CIGS, and 29% efficiency improvement for narrow band gap CIGS. These results revealed that traces of iron impurities in copper sources can be a fatal poison to CIGS solar cells.