Characterization of 19.9%-efficient CIGS absorbers

Author

Repins, Ingrid ; Contreras, Miguel ; Romero, Manuel ; Yan, Yanfa ; Metzger, Wyatt ; Li, Jian ; Johnston, Steve ; Egaas, Brian ; DeHart, Clay ; Scharf, John ; McCandless, Brian E. ; Noufi, Rommel

Author_Institution

National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA

fYear

2008

fDate

11-16 May 2008

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

6

Abstract

We recently reported a new record total-area efficiency, 19.9%, for CuInGaSe2 (CIGS)-based thin-film solar cells [1]. Current-voltage analysis indicates that improved performance in the record device is due to reduced recombination. The reduced recombination was achieved by terminating the processing with a Ga-poor (In-rich) layer, which has led to a number of devices exceeding the prior (19.5%) efficiency record. This paper documents the properties of the high-efficiency CIGS by a variety of characterization techniques, with an emphasis on identifying near-surface properties associated with the modified processing.

Keywords

Energy conversion; Grain boundaries; Laboratories; Luminescence; Probes; Renewable energy resources; Scanning electron microscopy; Spectroscopy; Transmission electron microscopy; Tunneling;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2008. PVSC '08. 33rd IEEE

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA, USA

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1640-0

Electronic_ISBN

0160-8371

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2008.4922628

Filename

4922628