Potential gain in photocurrent generation for Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 solar cells by using In 2 O 3 as a transparent conductive oxide layer

This study highlights the potential of atomic layer deposited In 2 O 3 as a highly transparent and conductive oxide (TCO) layer in Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 (CIGSe) solar cells. It is shown that the efficiency of solar cells which use Zn‐Sn‐O (ZTO) as an alternative buffer layer can be increased by employing In 2 O 3 as a TCO because of a reduction of the parasitic absorption in the window layer structure, resulting in 1.7 mA/cm 2 gain in short circuit current density ( J sc ). In contrast, a degradation of device properties is observed if the In 2 O 3 TCO is combined with the conventional CdS buffer layer. The estimated improvement for large‐scale modules is discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.