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Electrodeposited CuSbSe2 thin films based solar cells on various substrates

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Abstract

CuSbSe2 is a promising absorber nano-material for thin-film solar cells, for its attractive photovoltaic properties, low cost, and environmentally friendly constituent elements. In this work, the interest was focused on the investigation of the effect of three types of substrates (FTO, ITO, and Mo) and deposition time on the characteristics of the electrodeposited films and on the efficiency of the CuSbSe2-based PV cells. The adopted architecture for this is the typical of substrate/CuSbSe2/CdS/i-ZnO/Al-ZnO. XRD reveals that CuSbSe2 thin films deposited on different substrates are grown in orthorhombic CuSbSe2 chalcostibite form (JCPDS: 98-041-8754), all with 65 nm crystallite size. However, the deposition time affects their preferential directions. SEM-EDX analysis shows that the sample deposited on ITO (45 min) has an almost stoichiometric composition with the lowest impurity content. Despite this, the FTO-based solar cell (60 min) shows the best efficiency (0.51%), compared to the ITO-based cell (0.12%), due to higher Jsc values.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the IMEM-CNR team (Italy) and Mustapha Agnaou (Morocco) for the XRD, SEM, and electrical measurements.

Funding

This work was partially funded by The Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education and Research in the framework of the CNRST (Morocco)/CNR (Italy) cooperation program: “Towards very low cost deposition of Chalcopyrite and Kesterite-based thin film solar cells: CIGS (Cu (In,Ga)Se2) and CZTS (Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4).”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Materials and Renewable Energy (LMER), Physics Department, University of Ibn Zohr, 80000, Agadir, Morocco

    Khadija Abouabassi, Ahmed Soussi, Abdeslam Elfanaoui, Hassan Kirou, Abderrahim Ait Hssi, Khalid Bouabid & Ahmed Ihlal

  2. IMEM-CNR, Institute of Materials for Electronic and Magnetism, 43124, Parma, Italy

    Andrea Sala & Edmondo Gilioli

  3. Instituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), 56025, Pontedera, Italy

    Andrea Sala

  4. Materials and Nanomaterials for Photovoltaic Conversion and Electrochemical Storage, Faculty of Science, Mohammed V University, 10106, Rabat, Morocco

    Lahoucine Atourki

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  1. Khadija Abouabassi
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  2. Andrea Sala
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Correspondence to Khadija Abouabassi.

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Abouabassi, K., Sala, A., Atourki, L. et al. Electrodeposited CuSbSe2 thin films based solar cells on various substrates. J Nanopart Res 24, 221 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11051-022-05603-3

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