Comparison of Aluminum Zinc Oxide and Indium Tin Oxide for Transparent Conductive Oxide layer in Cu(In,Ga)Se₂Solar Cell

Abstract

The photovoltaic performances of i- ZnO/CdS/Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 (CIGS) solar cell with different window architectures of SnO 2 :In 2 O 3 (ITO), Al 2 O 3 :ZnO (AZO) and ITO/AZO, were experimentally compared. The solar cell with ITO deposited directly on i-ZnO layer showed an abnormal current-voltage characteristic as having a shunt path. Both of AZO and ITO/AZO resulted in normal current-voltage behavior as far as AZO is contacting ZnO.

Valence and conduction band offsets in AZO/Ga2O3 heterostructures

“…AZO thin films have been widely studied for transparent and flexible device applications such as liquid crystal displays, plasma display panels, electronic paper displays, organic light emitting diode, solar cells, touch panels, gas sensors and other optoelectronics devices (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24) . The most commonly used transparent conducting oxide (TCO) material is ITO, because of its high conductivity and optical transparency over visible wavelengths.…”

All-Nonvacuum-Processed CIGS Solar Cells Using Scalable Ag NWs/AZO-Based Transparent Electrodes

“…Despite the electrical conductivity of AZO being not as high as that of ITO, AZO has a higher optical transparency as compared with ITO films of similar thickness. CIGS solar cells using AZO and ITO as electrodes exhibited comparable performance . Furthermore, the low cost and abundant materials for AZO make it the most promising alternative to ITO in the photovoltaic industry, and it is already widely used as a front contact in CIGS solar cells .…”

“…CIGS solar cells using AZO and ITO as electrodes exhibited comparable performance. 20 Furthermore, the low cost and abundant materials for AZO make it the most promising alternative to ITO in the photovoltaic industry, and it is already widely used as a front contact in CIGS solar cells. 21 Moon's group replaced the expensive ITO NPs by less expensive AZO and applied the AZO/Ag NWs/AZO composite as an electrode in CIGS solar cells, and the best device efficiency was 11.3%.…”

Ohmic contacts on n-type β-Ga2O3 using AZO/Ti/Au

“…26 AZO has been heavily studied for transparent and flexible device applications such as display panels, gas sensors, organic light emitting diodes, and other optoelectronic devices. [27][28][29][30][31][32] In this letter, we report on the use of AZO interlayers in facilitating Ohmic behavior in Ti/Au contacts on n-type, Si implanted β-Ga 2 O 3 . The minimum specific contact resistance of 2.82×10 -5 Ω-cm 2 was achieved after annealing at 400 • C. By sharp contrast, Ti/Au contacts without the AZO did not lead to Ohmic behavior.…”

“…Low temperature annealing further improved the Ohmic behavior, with compliance of 100 mA reached first by the sample annealed at 400 • C. Increasing annealing temperature further did not improve performance. In previous works, annealing above 300 • C has been found to decrease the carrier concentration and electron mobility within the AZO layer [26][27][28][29][30] temperatures and can be seen when comparing the I-V curves of annealing temperatures 400 • C and 600 • C. The TLM data was used to extract the sheet resistance (R S ), specific contact resistance (R C ), and transfer resistance (R T ). A sample output resistance vs. gap size from AZO contact stack annealed at 400 • C is shown in Figure 4, and a strong linear dependence (r 2 = 0.991) is observed.…”