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Influence of selenium growth condition on the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of Sb2Se3 as the solar cell absorption layer

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Abstract

The influences of the selenium (Se) growth condition on the electronic level structure including deep defects and further on the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of antimony selenide (Sb2Se3) as the solar cell absorber layer are investigated by controlling the Se powder content during the vapor transport deposition process. The detailed characterizations including X-ray diffraction, Raman, optical absorption and photoluminescence reveal that the deep defects including the Se vacancies on the Sb2Se3 surface are largely reduced, and the efficiency of Sb2Se3 solar cells can be significantly improved, e.g., by about 31% from 5.1% to 6.7% after adding excessive Se powder during the growth process. This result may provide a basic guideline for improving the efficiency of Sb2Se3 solar cells during the growth process of the Sb2Se3 absorption layer.

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Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61874043, 61790583, 61874045, 61775060), National Key Research and Development Program (2016YFB0501604), Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan (21JC1402000, 19JC1416700), Aero-Science Fund (201824X8001), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices, Ministry of Education, Department of Electronic Engineering, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Shangwei Dong, Lin Sun & Fangyu Yue

Authors
  1. Shangwei Dong
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  2. Lin Sun
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  3. Fangyu Yue
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by SD, FY and LS. The first draft of the manuscript was written by SD and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lin Sun or Fangyu Yue.

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Dong, S., Sun, L. & Yue, F. Influence of selenium growth condition on the photovoltaic conversion efficiency of Sb2Se3 as the solar cell absorption layer. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 33, 10335–10342 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-022-08021-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-022-08021-2

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