Production of CIGS solar cell with an appropriate atomic ratio using magnetron sputtering

Abstract

A Cu (In, Ga)Se2 (CIGS) chalcopyrite-type structure solar cell is produced using magnetron sputtering with Cu0.75Ga0.25 and In targets, followed by a three-stage selenization process. A metallic precursor CuGa (maintained at ∼300 nm)/In (various indium film thickness) is used to study the process for the fabrication of a CIGS film. The sample that is selenized at 550 °C has a tetragonal chalcopyrite phase structure with main diffraction peaks (112) at 2θ ∼ 26.6° and other prominent peaks (220/204) and (312)/(116) crystal planes. A favorable atomic ratio for the CIGS films is achieved for respective ratios of [Ga/(In+Ga)] and [Cu/(In+Ga)] in the CIGS absorber layers of 0.28 and 0.99. These ratios are almost equal to the ratios for the respective precursor layer. The near-stoichiometric films are uniform and crack-free and have better crystalline quality and large surface grains. A CIGS heterojunction solar cell is synthesized and the photo-conversion efficiency is calculated.

Environment-friendly copper-based chalcogenide thin film solar cells: status and perspectives

“…It was found that a compact film with large grains could be obtained using a substrate temperature of lower than 400 1C; thus, a substrate temperature higher than 400 1C potentially could decrease the cell performance of the CIGS-based solar cells. 206 By using the sputtering method, a CIGS-based solar cell with 14.2% of PCE having an aperture area of 51.7 cm 2 using Zn(O,S,OH) x buffer layer could be obtained. 205 Another report also shows CIGS solar cells with PCE of 15.8% also have been successfully fabricated using a direct sputtering process without Se alloy.…”

Impact of Sb Incorporation on the Structural and Optical Properties of CZTS Thin Films Grown by Spin Coating Technique

“…Copper Indium Selenide (CIS), Cadmium Telluride (CdTe), and Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) are utilized as semiconductor materials in the secondgeneration photovoltaic cells, which are referred to as thin-film solar cells. CIGS photovoltaic cells are high power conversion efficient of over 20% efficiency [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] . On the other hand, In and Ga are not abundant on Earth, hence the presence of these elements makes large-scale commercial manufacture of CIGS solar cells more problematic 10 .…”

“…Figure 4(c) shows the graphs between hn and, (ahn)2 for all the samples. The intercept between the tangent {drawn to the graph between hn and (ahn) 2 } and the hn axis provides the band gap value (E g ).…”