Superstrate-type flexible and bifacial Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin-film solar cells with In2O3:SnO2 back contact

Abstract

Bifacial and flexible Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) thin-film solar cells with superstrate-type structure were fabricated. For this fabrication, the substrate-type solar cells were first transferred from Mo/Glass substrates to 50-µm-thick flexible fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) copolymer films as superstrates using a lift-off process. The 300-nm-thick In2O3:SnO2 (ITO) thin-films were subsequently deposited on the rear sides of the CIGS absorber layers as back contacts (BC) of the finished bifacial devices with the structure of FEP/Epoxy/Al/Ni/Zn0.9Mg0.1O:Al/Zn0.8Mg0.2O/CdS/CIGS/ITO/Ni/Al. Particular attention was paid to maintain the high optical and electrical transport properties of ITO-BC as well as to improve the Ohmic-like contact behavior at the CIGS/ITO interface to improve cell performances. Under the optimized ITO preparation, the resulting ITO thin film possesses the average optical transparency of ITO (>77%) in the wavelength range of 400–1100 nm, and the resistivity of 6.1 × 10−4 Ωcm with corresponding high carrier mobility of 42.8 cm2/Vs, as well as Ohmic-like characteristics at the CIGS/ITO interface can be realized with shunt resistance as low as 5.5 Ωcm2. Consequently, the flexible and bifacial CIGS thin-film solar cell was fabricated with efficiencies of 9.1% and 2.4% for frontside and backside illuminations, respectively. In this study, highly transparent and conductive ITO thin films have been successfully used as BC in flexible and bifacial CIGS solar cells.