Optical and electrical properties of electron-irradiated Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells

• DOI: 10.1016/j.tsf.2010.12.132
• Publication Date: 2010-12-24T09:19:37Z
• Authors: Y. Hirose; M. Warasawa; K. Takakura; S. Kimura; S.F. Chichibu; H. Ohyama; M. Sugiyama
• Keywords: Electron beam processing; Indium tin oxide

Abstract The optical and electrical properties of electron-irradiated Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) solar cells and the thin films that composed the CIGS solar cell structure were investigated. The transmittance of indium tin oxide (ITO), ZnO:Al, ZnO:Ga, undoped ZnO, and CdS thin films did not change for a fluence of up to 1.5 × 1018 cm− 2. However, the resistivity of ZnO:Al and ZnO:Ga, which are generally used as window layers for CIGS solar cells, increased with increasing irradiation fluence. For CIGS thin films, the photoluminescence peak intensity due to Cu-related point defects, which do not significantly affect solar cell performance, increased with increasing electron irradiation. In CIGS solar cells, decreasing JSC and increasing Rs reflected the influence of irradiated ZnO:Al, and decreasing VOC and increasing Rsh mainly tended to reflect the pn-interface properties. These results may indicate that the surface ZnO:Al thin film and several heterojunctions tend to degrade easily by electron irradiation as compared with the bulk of semiconductor-composed solar cells.