Deposition of Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 (CIGS) thin film solar cells on metallic substrate is an attractive approach for development of low cost solar modules. However, in such devices, special care has to be taken to avoid diffusion of impurities, such as Fe, Ni, and Cr, from the substrate into the active layers. In this work, the influence of Ni and Cr impurities on the electronic properties of CIGS thin film solar cells is investigated in detail. Impurities were introduced into the CIGS layer by diffusion during the CIGS deposition process from a Ni or Cr precursor layer below the Mo electrical back contact. A high temperature and a low temperature CIGS deposition process were applied in order to correlate the changes in the photovoltaic parameters with the amount of impurities diffused into the absorber layer. Solar cells with Ni and Cr impurities show a reduction in the device performance, whereas the effect was most pronounced in Ni containing devices. The presence of deep defect levels in the absorber layer was identified with admittance spectroscopy and can be related to Ni and Cr impurities, which diffused into the CIGS layer according to secondary ion mass spectroscopy depth profiles and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In this work, the influence of Ni and Cr impurities on the electronic properties of CIGS thin film solar cells is investigated. Impurities were introduced into the CIGS layer by diffusion during the CIGS deposition process from a Ni or Cr precursor layer below the Mo electrical back contact. Solar cells with Ni and Cr impurities show a reduction in the device performance due to the presence of impurity related deep defect levels which we identified with admittance spectroscopy.


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    Title :

    Influence of Ni and Cr impurities on the electronic properties of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin film solar cells



    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2015




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English



    Classification :

    BKL:    53.36 Energiedirektumwandler, elektrische Energiespeicher



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