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Study on the thickness effect of wide-bandgap CuGaSe2 thin films for applications with tandem solar cells

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Abstract

For application on the top cell of a tandem structure, chalcopyrite CuGaSe2 (CGS) thin films were prepared on as-deposited 200-nm-thick indium-tin-oxide (ITO) thin films grown by using radiofrequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. CGS thin films with a wide bandgap of 1.63 eV for use in high open-circuit-voltage solar cells were deposited by using a three-stage co-evaporation process with Cu, Ga, and Se elemental sources with compositional ratios of Cu/Ga = 0.88 and Se/(Cu + Ga) = 0.98. In this study, we examined the effect of the thickness of the top-cell CGS thin films on the tandem cell performance, which is a key factor for improving the cell’s efficiency for optimum light absorption. The film thickness was varied from 0.5 μm to 2 μm in intervals of 0.5 μm by controlling the process time to confirm the optical and the electrical properties of solar cells. Based on our experimental results as a function of the CGS film’s thickness, we achieved a solar cell efficiency of 5.77% with a 1.5-μm-thick CGS thin film in the cell structure fabricated as Al/ZnO: Al/i-ZnO/CdS/CGS/ITO/SLG.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Photovoltaic Laboratory, Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon, 34129, Korea

    Jang Hun Choi, Kihwan Kim, Seung-Kyu Ahn, Ara Cho, Jun-Sik Cho, Jae-Ho Yun & Jinsu Yoo

  2. Department of Renewable Energy Engineering, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34113, Korea

    Seung-Kyu Ahn, Ara Cho, Jun-Sik Cho, Jae-Ho Yun & Jinsu Yoo

  3. School of Electronics Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, 41566, Korea

    Seong Ho Kong

Authors
  1. Jang Hun Choi
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  2. Kihwan Kim
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  3. Seung-Kyu Ahn
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  4. Ara Cho
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  5. Jun-Sik Cho
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  6. Jae-Ho Yun
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  7. Jinsu Yoo
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  8. Seong Ho Kong
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Correspondence to Jinsu Yoo.

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Choi, J.H., Kim, K., Ahn, SK. et al. Study on the thickness effect of wide-bandgap CuGaSe2 thin films for applications with tandem solar cells. Journal of the Korean Physical Society 69, 197–201 (2016). https://doi.org/10.3938/jkps.69.197

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3938/jkps.69.197

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