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Realization of performance enhancement of thin film silicon solar cells by applying ITO/AZO bilayer TCO films as front electrode

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Abstract

Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) are enormously endorsed as electrodes in solar photovoltaics industry due to featuring excellent opto-electronics properties. Indium tin oxide (ITO) has been quite popular in TCO industry as it features superior electrical conductivity along with higher optical transparency in comparison with other popular TCO materials. Nevertheless, the usage of ITO has been found to be limited as front electrodes in thin film silicon solar cells due to its sustainability issue in H2 plasma and less abundance of indium. In contrast, other promising TCO materials such as aluminium doped zinc oxide (AZO), boron doped zinc oxide (BZO), gallium doped zinc oxide (GZO) etc. are found to quite durable in H2 plasma environment and relatively cost-effective too. However, the opto-electronic qualities of such films are generally inferior to the ITO films. As a result, in this contribution, a thorough study has been carried out on relatively less explored ITO/AZO bilayer TCO films. A detailed comparison in terms of the structural, morphological and opto-electronic properties among single layer ITO films, single layer AZO films and ITO/AZO bilayer films has been made. The study has been further extended to realize the impact of using ITO/AZO bilayer films instead of single layer AZO film as front electrodes in single junction a-Si:H solar cells. The best single junction a-Si:H solar cell which featured ITO/AZO bilayer as front electrode and was fabricated into superstrate configuration demonstrated significant gain in short-circuit current density (Jsc) of 0.79 mA/cm2 and hence, power conversion efficiency of 0.37% (absolute) compared to the cells which comprised of single layer 900 nm thick AZO film as front electrode (reference cell). The improvement in Jsc might be attributed to the realization of superior figure of merit (FOM) of bilayer samples to its counterpart.

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The datasets generated during the study and analyses are not publicly available before publication of the manuscript as those data sets has been used to prepare the manuscript and available in the manuscript itself.

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Funding

The present work has been carried out in DST-IIEST Solar PV Hub and supported by Department of Science and Technology (DST/TMD/SERI/HUB/2(G) Govt. of India (GoI). One of the authors Dibyendu Kumar Ghosh is acknowledging Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), India for their financial support for carrying out his doctoral studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Advanced Materials, Green Energy and Sensor Systems (SAMGESS), Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, Howrah, India

    Dibyendu Kumar Ghosh, Gourab Das & Sumita Mukhopadhyay

  2. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Academy of Technology (AOT), Adisaptagram, Hooghly, India

    Sukanta Bose

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Shibpur, Howrah, India

    Anindita Sengupta

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  1. Dibyendu Kumar Ghosh
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the conception, design and execution. DKG: film deposition and analysis, preparing manuscript, SB: preparing manuscript, GD: conceptualizing and cell fabrication, SM: proof correction and supervising, AS: supervising and mentor. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Gourab Das.

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Ghosh, D.K., Bose, S., Das, G. et al. Realization of performance enhancement of thin film silicon solar cells by applying ITO/AZO bilayer TCO films as front electrode. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 34, 2189 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-11570-9

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