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High‐efficiency CIGS submodules
Author(s) -
Komaki Hironori,
Furue Shigenori,
Yamada Akimasa,
Ishizuka Shogo,
Shibata Hajime,
Matsubara Koji,
Niki Shigeru
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
progress in photovoltaics: research and applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.286
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1099-159X
pISSN - 1062-7995
DOI - 10.1002/pip.2172
Subject(s) - copper indium gallium selenide solar cells , soda lime glass , materials science , evaporation , aperture (computer memory) , optoelectronics , optics , solar cell , composite material , physics , engineering , mechanical engineering , thermodynamics
The approaches and achievements in the development of high‐efficiency CuInGaSe 2 (CIGS) monolithically integrated submodules will be reported. Two types of techniques, the conventional (batch‐process) and the in‐line three‐stage evaporation techniques, have been employed to deposit high‐quality CIGS absorbers on 10 × 10‐cm Mo/soda lime glass substrates. CIGS films deposited by both the conventional and the in‐line evaporation techniques showed an in‐depth compositional grading of In and Ga (referred as the double graded bandgap) which is a fingerprint of the three‐stage evaporation process. The optimization of the integration processes such as mechanical scribing, as well as the improvement in electrical and optical properties of ZnO window layers, made possible the demonstration of high‐efficency CIGS submodules with efficiencies as high as η = 16.6% (aperture area: 67.2 cm 2 ) and η = 15.8% (aperture area: 76.5 cm 2 ) for the conventional and the in‐line evaporation process, respectively. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.