Issue 15, 2014

Combinatorial solar cell libraries for the investigation of different metal back contacts for TiO2–Cu2O hetero-junction solar cells

Abstract

Here we present a comprehensive investigation of TiO2–Cu2O hetero-junction solar cells with different back contacts (Au, ITO, Cu or Ag). Combinatorial hetero-junction libraries consisting of a linear TiO2 thickness gradient produced by spray pyrolysis and a bell shaped Cu2O profile synthesized by pulsed laser deposition were chosen to investigate the impact of the two metal oxide layer thicknesses. The back contacts were deposited as round patches onto a grid of 13 × 13 points, 169 contacts for each contact material, forming a library containing 4 × 13 × 13 = 676 back contacts. Each back contact represented a solar cell with an individual TiO2 and Cu2O thickness. IV measurements show that all four materials provide an ohmic contact and that the open circuit voltage of ∼300 mV is rather independent of both layer thicknesses and contact material. The size of the Cu2O crystals drastically decreases with distance from the center of deposition, which leads to a drastic increase of series resistance when the crystal size is <50 nm.

Graphical abstract: Combinatorial solar cell libraries for the investigation of different metal back contacts for TiO2–Cu2O hetero-junction solar cells

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
05 Feb 2014
Accepted
13 Feb 2014
First published
17 Feb 2014

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014,16, 7066-7073

Author version available

Combinatorial solar cell libraries for the investigation of different metal back contacts for TiO2–Cu2O hetero-junction solar cells

S. Rühle, H. N. Barad, Y. Bouhadana, D. A. Keller, A. Ginsburg, K. Shimanovich, K. Majhi, R. Lovrincic, A. Y. Anderson and A. Zaban, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2014, 16, 7066 DOI: 10.1039/C4CP00532E

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