Abstract
CZTS thin films were fabricated through sputtering from a quaternary Cu-Zn-Sn-S target, followed by a sulfurization process. CZTS thin-film solar cells were also fabricated and a highest efficiency of 4.04% was achieved. It has been found that obvious Zn loss occurs during the sputtering and poorly crystallized CZTS are formed in the sputtered films. The Zn loss leads to the appearance of SnS. A sulfurization process can obviously improve the crystallinity of CZTS and films with grain size of several hundred nanometers can be obtained after sulfurization. The optical band gap of the films is estimated to be 1.57 eV. The electrical properties of the 4.04% efficient solar cell were investigated and it has been found that cell has obvious deficiency in minority carrier lifetime. This deficiency should be responsible for the low <svg style="vertical-align:-3.39064pt;width:18.012501px;" id="M1" height="15.4" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 18.012501 15.4" width="18.012501" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <g transform="matrix(.017,-0,0,-.017,.062,11.112)"><path id="x1D43D" d="M434 650l-5 -28q-60 -8 -75 -20.5t-25 -69.5l-71 -395q-20 -107 -57.5 -168t-106.5 -94q-40 -18 -61 -20l-10 32q77 23 113 108q21 50 41 160l68 377q10 57 -1.5 69.5t-76.5 20.5l6 28h261z" /></g> <g transform="matrix(.012,-0,0,-.012,7.825,15.187)"><path id="x73" d="M319 325l-25 -7q-33 99 -103 99q-29 0 -47 -19.5t-18 -49.5t22 -49.5t62 -36.5q63 -26 95 -57t32 -79q0 -64 -50 -101t-115 -37q-35 0 -67.5 10.5t-46.5 23.5q-5 11 -11 51t-6 67l27 5q14 -53 46.5 -88.5t75.5 -35.5q29 0 50 19.5t21 50.5t-19.5 51.5t-59.5 39.5
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Highlights
Thin-film solar cells based on the inorganic semiconductor CIGSe have demonstrated brilliant photovoltaic properties and great efforts have been devoted to the research of CIGSe thin film solar cells in recent years
The time-resolved photoluminescence (TR-PL) measurement was performed on a finished cell using an Edinburg time-correlated single-photo counting system (F900), utilizing a 385 nm solid-state laser with a pulse width of around 3 ns and a repletion frequency of 40 kHZ as excitation source
Since the diffraction peaks of CZTS, Cu2SnS3, and ZnS phases are nearly the same, the actual phase corresponding to those two peaks cannot be identified as CZTS yet
Summary
Thin-film solar cells based on the inorganic semiconductor CIGSe have demonstrated brilliant photovoltaic properties and great efforts have been devoted to the research of CIGSe thin film solar cells in recent years. Great efforts have been devoted to the fabrication of CZTS thin-film solar cells and various approaches have been developed, such as solution-based chemical synthesis methods [6,7,8], electroplating [9,10,11], sol-gel [12, 13], pulsed laser deposition [14, 15], evaporation [16, 17], and sputtering [18,19,20]. Inamdar et al fabricated CZTS films with band gap of 1.55 eV through rf magnetron sputtering from a CZTS target in 2012 [29]. He et al investigated the effect of postsulfurization on the properties of CZTS films deposited by rf sputtering from a quaternary target in 2013 [30]. The details of the preparation and characterization results of the CZTS thin films as well as solar cells were reported
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