Abstract
Thin film Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS)-based solar cells with relatively high efficiency and low material usage might become a promising alternative for crystalline silicon technology. The most challenging task nowadays is to decrease the PV module fabrication costs by application of easily scalable industrial process. One of the possible solutions is the usage of magnetron sputtering system for deposition of all structures applied in CIGS-based photovoltaic device. The main object of these studies was fabrication and characterization of thin films deposited by sputtering technique. Structural and electrical properties of the sputtered films were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray Powder Diffraction (XRD), and four-point probe resistivity measurements. The presented findings revealed technological parameters for which sheet resistance of molybdenum (Mo) back contact decreased up to 0.3 Ω/□ and to even 0.08 Ω/□ in case of aluminum layer. EDS analysis provided evidence for the appropriate stoichiometry of CIGS absorber (with CGI and GGI equal to 0.96 and 0.2, respectively). XRD characterization confirmed high-quality chalcopyrite polycrystalline structure of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 film fabricated at relatively low substrate temperature of 400 °C. Characteristic XRD peaks of hexagonal-oriented structures of sputtered CdS and i-ZnO layers were noticed.
Highlights
Nowadays, renewable energy technologies are becoming an important issue in many countries of the world due to climate changes
Thin layers creating the copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) device were obtained by the use of magnetron sputtering technique
The structural and electrical properties of analyzed layers deposited using only magnetron The structural and electrical properties of analyzed layers deposited using only magnetron sputtering method confirmed the possibility of fabrication the highly conductive contact layers, as well sputtering method confirmed the possibility of fabrication the highly conductive contact layers, as as of high-quality CIGS absorber together with a cadmium sulfide (CdS) and i-ZnO buffer layer
Summary
Renewable energy technologies are becoming an important issue in many countries of the world due to climate changes. Among a variety of renewable sources, solar photovoltaics is one of the most promising. In the last few years, a strong increase in photovoltaic (PV) installations could be observed. By the end of 2018, about 488 GWp of the total PV capacity were installed [1]. The total power capacity was doubled in only three years [2]. According to the authors of [1], the photovoltaic market mostly belongs to silicon crystalline technology (about 93% of the total installed PV power). Copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) thin film technology becomes a promising alternative to silicon photovoltaics due to tunable band gap, high absorption coefficient, minimum material usage and relatively low temperature coefficients [3,4]. Among other thin-film technologies, CIGS is characterized by the best laboratory (23.4%) and module (19.2%) efficiency [7]
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