Abstract
Silver nanowires in conjunction with sputter-coated Al-doped ZnO (AZO) thin films were used as a composite transparent top electrode for hybrid radial-junction ZnO nanowire/a-Si:H p-i-n thin-film solar cells. Solar cells with the composite nanowire top contacts attained a short-circuit current density (Jsc) of 13.9 mA/cm2 and a fill factor (FF) of 62% on glass substrates while a Jsc of 13.0 mA/cm2 and FF of 62% was achieved on plastic substrates. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the 3-dimensional solar cells improved by up to 60% compared to using AZO electrodes alone due to enhanced coverage of the top electrode over the 3-D structures, decreasing the series resistance of the device by 5×. The composite layer also showed a 10× reduction in sheet resistance compared to the AZO thin-film contact under applied mechanical strain.
Highlights
Silver NWs have been employed as an alternate electrode in planar organic[13,14,15] and inorganic[16, 17] devices
The σDC/σop achieved for 1 layer of Ag NWs was determined to be below the percolation threshold due to a low effective thickness, resulting in a high Rsheet (560 kΩ/sq)[25] A maximum σDC/σop was obtained from a dual coating of Ag NWs
An annealing temperature of 200 °C resulted in the sintering of the Ag NWs to form a continuous and conformal contact to the 3-D NWSC structures that resulted in minimizing Rsheet of the contact
Summary
Silver nanowires in conjunction with sputter-coated Al-doped ZnO (AZO) thin films were used as a composite transparent top electrode for hybrid radial-junction ZnO nanowire/a-Si:H p-i-n thin-film solar cells. A composite electrode consisting of Ag NWs and sputter-coated Al-doped ZnO (AZO) was used to create composite top electrodes on high density, disordered hybrid radial-junction NWSCs on flexible substrates. Planar cells were fabricated having the same a-Si:H thin-film p-i-n layers used in the hybrid NWSC structures In these devices, the a-Si:H p-i-n layers were deposited directly onto the Cr bottom contact and the top transparent electrode was an Al-doped ZnO layer. Electrical I-V characteristics of the fabricated NWSCs and planar devices were extracted using an AM 1.5 G illumination solar simulator (ABET Technologies 2000) and the external quantum efficiency (EQE) was measured using a monochromatic light source (PV Measurements) calibrated with a reference Si solar cell
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