Vacancy enhanced cation ordering enables >15% efficiency in Kesterite solar cells

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2404.05974
• Publication Date: 2024-04-08
• Authors: Jinlin Wang; Licheng Lou; Kang Yin; Fanqi Meng; Xiao Xu; Menghan Jiao; Bowen Zhang; Jiangjian Shi; Huijue Wu; Yanhong Luo; Dongmei Li; Qingbo Meng
• Keywords: Kesterite

Atomic disorder, a widespread problem in compound crystalline materials, is imperative affecting the performance of multi-chalcogenide Cu2ZnSn(S, Se)4 (CZTSSe) photovoltaic device known for its low cost and environmental friendliness. Cu-Zn disorder particularly abundantly present CZTSSe due to extraordinarily formation energy, having induced high-concentration deep defects severe charge loss, while regulation remains challenging contradiction between disorder-order phase transition thermodynamics atom-interchange kinetics. Herein, through introducing more vacancies surface, we explored vacancy-assisted strategy reduce barrier limit facilitate ordering kinetic process. The improvement order degree has significantly reduced loss helped us realize 15.4% (certified at 14.9%) 13.5% efficiency 13.3%) 0.27 cm2 1.1 cm2-area solar cells, respectively, thus bringing substantial advancement emerging inorganic thin-film photovoltaics.