Calculating material criticality of transparent conductive electrodes used for thin film and third generation solar cells

Abstract

The supply risk and exposure to supply shortage is becoming an important factor in the consideration of a mass low carbon technology roll-out. This study takes current criticality studies, which analyse the criticality of single raw materials, and extends it to calculate the relative criticality of multiple material transparent conductive electrodes (TCE). It compares the calculated criticality with the TCE's Haacke figure of merit. It is found that more recent TCEs developed to replace the commonly used indium tin oxide, such as flurine doped tin oxide and silver nanowires, can have a higher criticality, even though the materials themselves are currently less expensive.