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Enhancement in the Efficiency of Sb 2 Se 3 Thin‐Film Solar Cells by Increasing Carrier Concertation and Inducing Columnar Growth of the Grains
Author(s) -
Guo Huafei,
Chen Zhiwen,
Wang Xing,
Cang Qingfei,
Jia Xuguang,
Ma Changhao,
Yuan Ningyi,
Ding Jianning
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
solar rrl
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.544
H-Index - 37
ISSN - 2367-198X
DOI - 10.1002/solr.201800224
Subject(s) - selenide , materials science , antimony , solar cell , thin film , layer (electronics) , monatomic gas , evaporation , gallium antimonide , nanotechnology , chemical engineering , optoelectronics , selenium , chemistry , metallurgy , organic chemistry , physics , engineering , thermodynamics , superlattice
Antimony selenide (Sb 2 Se 3 ) thin films are attractive light‐absorbing materials for low‐cost and highly efficient thin‐film solar cells. Optimizing columnar growth of the grains and the proper hole concentration will be very helpful for improving the efficiency of Sb 2 Se 3 thin‐film solar cells. In this paper, a monoatomic layer of Al 2 O 3 prepared by the atomic layer deposition (ALD) method is used to increase the hole concentration of the Sb 2 Se 3 film. The increase in the hole concentration is mainly due to the suppression of n‐type defects, such as V se , or the increase in p‐type defects, such as V sb . In addition, a simple and environmentally friendly oxygen plasma method is used to modify the CdS film to induce ordered columnar growth of the Sb 2 Se 3 film deposited by the rapid thermal evaporation (RTE) method. Finally, an oxygen plasma treatment on CdS and a monoatomic Al 2 O 3 layer covering the Sb 2 Se 3 was combined to fabricate a solar cell with a new structure, FTO/CdS/P‐Sb 2 Se 3 /P + ‐Sb 2 Se 3 /Al 2 O 3 /Au, and its efficiency was increased from 2.48% to 6.7%. These simple, nontoxic, and industrially applicable methods provide potential avenues for preparing low‐cost and highly efficient solar cells.