Denis Guimard

Copper indium diselenide solar cells prepared by electrodeposition

Copper indium diselenide (CIS) layers have been prepared by an electrodeposition based process. The composition, density and adhesion properties of theses films were found to be highly suitable for use as the active layer in a CIS solar cell. After recrystallisation and the completion of the device layer (by the deposition of CdS and ZnO layers), efficiencies as high as 8.8 % were found (total area, 100 MW/cm/sup 2/, no AR coating) for small area devices (0.06 cm/sup 2/). To the best of our knowledge, this is a record efficiency for electrodeposited CIS, without any post additional vacuum deposition process. Promising results have been also obtained on 5/spl times/5 cm/sup 2/ substrates (average efficiency of 4.5 %).

Solution Processing Route to High Efficiency CuIn(S,Se)2 Solar Cells

Inorganic semiconductors have properties that are notoriously difficult to control due to the deleterious impact of crystalline imperfections, and this is especially so in solar cells. In this work, it is demonstrated that materials grown using wet chemistry processes for the preparation of nanocristalline precursors can achieve the same performance as the best state of the art, namely conversion efficiencies above 11% with CuInS2. Interestingly, due to the growth process, the active material inherit a porous morphology that is shown to play a part in the performance and functionality of the active material. The new device morphology leads to a device operation closer to that of nanoscale organic interpenetrated solar cells or dye sensitized solar cells than to those of standard polycrystalline ones.