Performance of transparent conductors on flexible glass and plastic substrates for thin film photovoltaics

Author

Burst, James M. ; Rance, W.L. ; Meysing, D.M. ; Wolden, Colin A. ; Metzger, Wyatt K. ; Garner, Sean M. ; Cimo, Patrick ; Barnes, Teresa M. ; Gessert, Timothy A. ; Reese, Matthew O.

Author_Institution

NREL, Golden, CO, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

8-13 June 2014

Firstpage

1589

Lastpage

1592

Abstract

High-performance transparent conductive indium-tin-oxide (ITO) films on flexible glass have been flextested to 25-50k bend cycles without breakage, and with ~0.1% change in sheet resistance. In contrast, commercial ITO/PET samples undergo ~50-100% increase in sheet resistance in the same test, indicating that such coatings/substrates may not be acceptable for use in some products or fabrication procedures. The flexible glass substrate enables high-temperature processing, which facilitates the high performance of the coatings. Measurements of the volume resistivity and water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) indicate that Corning^® Willow^® Glass is suitable as a PV substrate material without need for barrier coatings or glass lamination.

Keywords

glass; solar cells; thin films; Corning willow glass; ITO; PET samples; PV substrate material; WVTR; fabrication procedures; flexible glass substrate; high-temperature processing; plastic substrates; sheet resistance; thin film photovoltaics; transparent conductive films; volume resistivity; water vapor transmission rate; Films; Glass; Indium tin oxide; Positron emission tomography; Resistance; Substrates; Temperature measurement; CdTe; PET; flexible glass; superstrate; transparent conductive oxides (TCOs);

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC), 2014 IEEE 40th

Conference_Location

Denver, CO

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2014.6925223

Filename

6925223