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Voids and compositional inhomogeneities in Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance
Structural defects such as voids and compositional inhomogeneities may affect the performance of Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) (CIGS) solar cells. We analyzed the morphology and elemental distributions in co-evaporated CIGS thin films at the different stages of the CIGS growth by energy-dispersive x-ray spectrosco...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6249540/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30479675 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14686996.2018.1536679 |
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author | Avancini, Enrico Keller, Debora Carron, Romain Arroyo-Rojas Dasilva, Yadira Erni, Rolf Priebe, Agnieszka Di Napoli, Simone Carrisi, Martina Sozzi, Giovanna Menozzi, Roberto Fu, Fan Buecheler, Stephan Tiwari, Ayodhya N. |
author_facet | Avancini, Enrico Keller, Debora Carron, Romain Arroyo-Rojas Dasilva, Yadira Erni, Rolf Priebe, Agnieszka Di Napoli, Simone Carrisi, Martina Sozzi, Giovanna Menozzi, Roberto Fu, Fan Buecheler, Stephan Tiwari, Ayodhya N. |
author_sort | Avancini, Enrico |
collection | PubMed |
description | Structural defects such as voids and compositional inhomogeneities may affect the performance of Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) (CIGS) solar cells. We analyzed the morphology and elemental distributions in co-evaporated CIGS thin films at the different stages of the CIGS growth by energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy in a transmission electron microscope. Accumulation of Cu-Se phases was found at crevices and at grain boundaries after the Cu-rich intermediate stage of the CIGS deposition sequence. It was found, that voids are caused by Cu out-diffusion from crevices and GBs during the final deposition stage. The Cu inhomogeneities lead to non-uniform diffusivities of In and Ga, resulting in lateral inhomogeneities of the In and Ga distribution. Two and three-dimensional simulations were used to investigate the impact of the inhomogeneities and voids on the solar cell performance. A significant impact of voids was found, indicating that the unpassivated voids reduce the open-circuit voltage and fill factor due to the introduction of free surfaces with high recombination velocities close to the CIGS/CdS junction. We thus suggest that voids, and possibly inhomogeneities, limit the efficiency of solar cells based on three-stage co-evaporated CIGS thin films. Passivation of the voids’ internal surface may reduce their detrimental effects. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6249540 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Taylor & Francis |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-62495402018-11-26 Voids and compositional inhomogeneities in Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance Avancini, Enrico Keller, Debora Carron, Romain Arroyo-Rojas Dasilva, Yadira Erni, Rolf Priebe, Agnieszka Di Napoli, Simone Carrisi, Martina Sozzi, Giovanna Menozzi, Roberto Fu, Fan Buecheler, Stephan Tiwari, Ayodhya N. Sci Technol Adv Mater Energy Materials Structural defects such as voids and compositional inhomogeneities may affect the performance of Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) (CIGS) solar cells. We analyzed the morphology and elemental distributions in co-evaporated CIGS thin films at the different stages of the CIGS growth by energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy in a transmission electron microscope. Accumulation of Cu-Se phases was found at crevices and at grain boundaries after the Cu-rich intermediate stage of the CIGS deposition sequence. It was found, that voids are caused by Cu out-diffusion from crevices and GBs during the final deposition stage. The Cu inhomogeneities lead to non-uniform diffusivities of In and Ga, resulting in lateral inhomogeneities of the In and Ga distribution. Two and three-dimensional simulations were used to investigate the impact of the inhomogeneities and voids on the solar cell performance. A significant impact of voids was found, indicating that the unpassivated voids reduce the open-circuit voltage and fill factor due to the introduction of free surfaces with high recombination velocities close to the CIGS/CdS junction. We thus suggest that voids, and possibly inhomogeneities, limit the efficiency of solar cells based on three-stage co-evaporated CIGS thin films. Passivation of the voids’ internal surface may reduce their detrimental effects. Taylor & Francis 2018-11-19 /pmc/articles/PMC6249540/ /pubmed/30479675 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14686996.2018.1536679 Text en © 2018 The Author(s). Published by National Institute for Materials Science in partnership with Taylor & Francis Group. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Energy Materials Avancini, Enrico Keller, Debora Carron, Romain Arroyo-Rojas Dasilva, Yadira Erni, Rolf Priebe, Agnieszka Di Napoli, Simone Carrisi, Martina Sozzi, Giovanna Menozzi, Roberto Fu, Fan Buecheler, Stephan Tiwari, Ayodhya N. Voids and compositional inhomogeneities in Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance |
title | Voids and compositional inhomogeneities in Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance |
title_full | Voids and compositional inhomogeneities in Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance |
title_fullStr | Voids and compositional inhomogeneities in Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance |
title_full_unstemmed | Voids and compositional inhomogeneities in Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance |
title_short | Voids and compositional inhomogeneities in Cu(In,Ga)Se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance |
title_sort | voids and compositional inhomogeneities in cu(in,ga)se(2) thin films: evolution during growth and impact on solar cell performance |
topic | Energy Materials |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6249540/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30479675 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14686996.2018.1536679 |
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