Vapor transport deposition of antimony selenide thin film solar cells with 7.6% efficiency

Antimony selenide is an emerging promising thin film photovoltaic material thanks to its binary composition, suitable bandgap, high absorption coefficient, inert grain boundaries and earth-abundant constituents. However, current devices produced from rapid thermal evaporation strategy suffer from lo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2018-06, Vol.9 (1), p.2179-10, Article 2179
Main Authors: Wen, Xixing, Chen, Chao, Lu, Shuaicheng, Li, Kanghua, Kondrotas, Rokas, Zhao, Yang, Chen, Wenhao, Gao, Liang, Wang, Chong, Zhang, Jun, Niu, Guangda, Tang, Jiang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/4077/909/4101/4096/946
639/766/1130
Absorptivity
Antimony
Cadmium
Cadmium sulfide
Cadmium telluride
Cadmium tellurides
Crystal defects
Deposition
Energy conversion efficiency
Evaporation
Grain boundaries
Humanities and Social Sciences
Intermetallic compounds
multidisciplinary
Photovoltaic cells
Photovoltaics
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Selenide
Solar cells
Solar power
Tellurides
Thin films
Transport
Vapors
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Summary:Antimony selenide is an emerging promising thin film photovoltaic material thanks to its binary composition, suitable bandgap, high absorption coefficient, inert grain boundaries and earth-abundant constituents. However, current devices produced from rapid thermal evaporation strategy suffer from low-quality film and unsatisfactory performance. Herein, we develop a vapor transport deposition technique to fabricate antimony selenide films, a technique that enables continuous and low-cost manufacturing of cadmium telluride solar cells. We improve the crystallinity of antimony selenide films and then successfully produce superstrate cadmium sulfide/antimony selenide solar cells with a certified power conversion efficiency of 7.6%, a net 2% improvement over previous 5.6% record of the same device configuration. We analyze the deep defects in antimony selenide solar cells, and find that the density of the dominant deep defects is reduced by one order of magnitude using vapor transport deposition process. Antimony selenide possess several advantages for solar cell applications but state-of-the-art vapor transport deposition methods suffer from poor film quality. Here Wen et al. develop a fast and cheap method to reduce the defect density by 10 times and achieve a certified power conversion efficiency of 7.6%.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-018-04634-6