Properties of high-efficiency CIGS thin-film solar cells

Author

Ramanathan, Kannan ; Keane, James ; Noufi, Rommel

Author_Institution

Nat. Center for Photovoltaics, Nat. Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO, USA

fYear

2005

fDate

3-7 Jan. 2005

Firstpage

195

Lastpage

198

Abstract

We present experimental results in three areas. Solar cells with an efficiency of 19% have been fabricated with an absorber bandgap in the range of 1.1-1.2 eV. Properties of solar cells fabricated with and without an undoped ZnO layer were compared. The data show that high efficiency cells can be fabricated without using the high-resistivity or undoped ZnO layer. Properties of CIGS solar cells were fabricated from thin absorbers (1 μm) deposited by the three-stage process and simultaneous co-deposition of all the elements. In both cases, solar cells with efficiencies of 16%-17% are obtained.

Keywords

II-VI semiconductors; copper compounds; electrical resistivity; energy gap; gallium compounds; indium compounds; solar cells; sputter deposition; ternary semiconductors; wide band gap semiconductors; zinc compounds; 16 to 17 percent; 19 percent; CuInGaSe₂-ZnO; absorber bandgap; high-efficiency CIGS thin-film solar cells; resistivity; simultaneous co-deposition; three-stage process; undoped ZnO layer; Laboratories; Manufacturing; Photonic band gap; Photovoltaic cells; Power conversion; Renewable energy resources; Substrates; Temperature; Transistors; Zinc oxide;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2005. Conference Record of the Thirty-first IEEE

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8707-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2005.1488103

Filename

1488103