Strategic review of secondary phases, defects and defect-complexes in kesterite CZTS-Se solar cells
Earth abundant kesterite copper-zinc-tin-sulfide-selenide (CZTS-Se) is considered as cost-effective material for next generation solar cells. However, current CZTS-Se solar cells have much lower efficiency than CIGS solar cells. Rapid progress in achieving the target efficiency in CZTS-Se solar cell...
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| Published in | Energy & environmental science Vol. 8; no. 11; pp. 3134 - 3159 |
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| Main Authors | , , , , |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
01.01.2015
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| Subjects | |
| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Earth abundant kesterite copper-zinc-tin-sulfide-selenide (CZTS-Se) is considered as cost-effective material for next generation solar cells. However, current CZTS-Se solar cells have much lower efficiency than CIGS solar cells. Rapid progress in achieving the target efficiency in CZTS-Se solar cells is hindered by the narrow phase stability of the quaternary phase, Cu
2
ZnSn(S
x
Se
1−
x
)
4
, and the existence of other competitive and complex secondary phases and defects. This resulted in structural inhomogeneity, local fluctuation of open circuit voltage and high carrier recombination that finally lead to poor device performance and repeatability issues. The higher performance of off-stoichiometric CZTS materials, copper-poor and zinc-rich, and their inherent association with secondary phases and defects force the scientific community to investigate them together. This work aims to provide a comprehensive review for optimum growth conditions to achieve efficient kesterite CZTS-Se material under different conditions, complementary characterization techniques to detect unwanted phases, defects and defect-complexes and various approaches to reduce the secondary phases, defects and defect-complexes for higher performance in CZTS-Se solar cells. Understanding and addressing the structural inhomogeneity, control growth and material characterization are expected to yield closer performance parity between CZTS-Se and CIGS solar cells.
This article presents a strategic review of secondary phases, defects and defect-complexes in kesterite CZTS-Se solar cells responsible for performance gap from CIGS solar cells. |
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| Bibliography: | Nirmal Adhikari received his Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal in 2006 and completed his Master's degree in Materials and Process of Sustainable Energetics from Tallinn University of Technology, Eastern Europe in 2011. He is currently pursuing his Doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering from South Dakota State University under the supervision of Dr Qiquan Qiao. His major research is on the interface engineering of perovskite solar cells at the nanoscale for efficient charge transport using Kelvin Probe Force microscopy (KPFM) and Transient Photoconductivity measurements. Dr Mukesh Kumar is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, India. He is a BASE fellow under Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, India and recently received the young scientist research award from Department of Atomic Energy, India. He did his PhD in physics from IIT Delhi, India in 2010 and worked at South Dakota State University, Colorado School of Mines and National Center for Photovoltaics, USA from 2010-2013. Current research focuses on kesterite and chalcopyrite materials, polymer BHJ, perovskite solar cells, transparent conducting electrodes and sensor development. Dr Qiquan Qiao is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at South Dakota State University (SDSU), where he established the Organic Electronics Laboratory. Current research focuses on polymer photovoltaics, Perovskite solar cells and dye-sensitized solar cells. He received the 2014 F O Butler Award for Excellence in research, the 2012 College of Engineering Young Investigator Award, the 2010 US NSF CAREER Award, and the 2009 Bergmann Memorial Award from the US-Israel Bi-national Science Foundation (BSF). Ashish Dubey is a graduate student in Electrical Engineering at South Dakota State University, US. He received his master's degree in Nanotechnology from Amity University, India. Currently he is carrying out his doctoral thesis work in the Dr Qiquan Qiao group. His research work includes perovskite solar cells, organic-inorganic semiconductor hybrid solar cells, structural and morphological studies of donor-acceptor blend films, and their optical and electrical characterization. Swaminathan Venkatesan received his Bachelor's degree in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India in 2006. He then completed his Masters in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA. He defended his Doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Dr Qiquan Qiao titled "Engineering nanomorphology in polymer solar cells for efficient charge transport". He is currently working as a Post-Doctoral Researcher with Dr Yan Yao where his research work includes studying the phase transition and charge transport in organic and inorganic-organic hybrid photovoltaic materials and devices. ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1754-5692 1754-5706 |
| DOI: | 10.1039/c5ee02153g |