Multifunctional metal oxide electrodes: Colour for thin film solar cells

Abstract

Building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) is an essential part to reduce the CO2 footprint of metropolitan areas. Currently, full integration of photovoltaic elements in a building is a very costly and complex undertaking, as it usually requires expensive custom modules. In order to increase the market share of BIPV in the residential mass market, a low-cost, flexible technical process to change the appearance of solar elements is required. Transparent conductive electrodes consisting of an oxide-metal-oxide (OMO) stack of thin layers have been optimized for application in thin film solar cells. Here the OMO stack is multifunctional: It provides the transparent front contact electrode and at the same time allows tuning of the module colour. This has several advantages compared to other colouring techniques, i.e. coloured glass or additional interlayers. The OMO colouring does not require an additional process step, and with sputtering an already existing deposition method is used. By varying the thickness of the oxide layers it is possible to change the reflected spectrum of the stack and with it the module colour. In this publication, we present how the optical model of the OMO stack, that is necessary for precise tuning of the colour, is first developed for OMO/glass samples and then report the changes necessary to adapt the OMOs for use on Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin film solar cells.