Guanghui Zhanga,
Yukun Wua,
Huaiyi Dingb,
Yunsong Zhua,
Junwen Lia,
Yue Linb,
Shenlong Jiangbc,
Qun Zhangbc,
Nan Panbc,
Yi Luobc and
Xiaoping Wang*abc
aDepartment of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P. R. China. E-mail: xpwang@ustc.edu.cn; Tel: +86-551-3607090
bHefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P. R. China
cSynergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information & Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, P. R. China
First published on 19th August 2015
All-inorganic solid-state ZnO/CdTe core–shell nanorod array solar cells (NRASCs) have been fabricated by a simple low-temperature and low-cost chemical solution method. A thin TiO2 layer with different thickness was introduced at the ZnO/CdTe interface using atomic layer deposition and its effect on the photovoltaic performance of the NRASCs was investigated. It is found that the overall power conversion efficiency of the ZnO/TiO2 (4 nm)/CdTe NRASC can reach up to 1.44% under AM 1.5G illumination (100 mW cm−2), which is about 6 times of the NRASC without TiO2 layer. By further systematic characterizations, we find that the thin TiO2 layer, serving as an efficient passivation and blocking layer at the interface of ZnO/CdTe nanorod, can remarkably suppress the charge recombination at the interface but negligibly affect the light absorption and the charge separation efficiency, thus leading to significant increases of the carrier lifetime and the open-circuit voltage of the NRASCs. This result expands the knowledge and opportunities for low-cost, high-performance NRASCs through simple interface engineering.
Among NRASC materials, n-type ZnO nanorod arrays (NRAs) are widely used as the electron transport component because of the high electron mobility and facile synthesis.7–11 Meanwhile, p-type CdTe is a promising active material for photovoltaics because of its nearly ideal band gap for single-junction solar cells and large optical absorption coefficient. In addition, a type-II energy band alignment is well defined between CdTe and ZnO, which can facilitate the separation of the electron–hole pairs.9,12,13 However, despite the aforementioned advantages, only a few ZnO/CdTe NRASCs have been reported and the corresponding performances are not as high as expected yet.12,14–16 Besides, the solar cells based on core–shell nanostructures always suffer from the low open-circuit voltage (Voc) and fill factor (FF) due to the severe charge recombination process occurred through the interface. Therefore, avoiding the charge carrier from the recombination is vital for improving the power conversion efficiency of core–shell NRASCs. To this end, various materials, such as TiO2,17–19 Al2O320 and ZrO2
21 have been introduced at the interface to increase the lifetime of minority carrier and enhance the device performance. Among these materials, TiO2 is most commonly used as an electron acceptor in photovoltaic devices owing to its good chemical stability.1 Moreover, since TiO2 has the similar valence band (VB) and conduction band (CB) energy levels as those of ZnO, it can efficiently passivate the surface defect of ZnO NR without degradation of the carrier transport. For example, Tian et al. introduced TiO2 nanosheets on the surface of ZnO NR in quantum dot sensitized solar cells to prolong the electron lifetime and increase the Voc.18
In this work, we fabricated solid-state ZnO/CdTe core–shell NRASCs through depositing the CdTe shell onto the hydrothermally-grown ZnO NRs using a low-cost successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) method.22–24 A thin TiO2 layer, with various thicknesses of 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 nm respectively, was introduced at the core–shell interface by atomic layer deposition (ALD) to reduce the interfacial charge recombination. The architecture of our solar cell is schematically shown in Fig. 1a. The photovoltaic performances of these ZnO/CdTe and ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRASCs have been systematically investigated. We found that the Voc of the solar cell is only 165 mV for ZnO/CdTe NRASC, but can increase dramatically after inserting the TiO2 layer and reach to 627 mV for ZnO/TiO2 (4 nm)/CdTe NRASC. At the same time, the short-circuit current density (Jsc) and FF is also slightly improved by the thin TiO2 interfacial layer. Consequently, the overall power conversion efficiency of the ZnO/TiO2 (4 nm)/CdTe NRASC can reach up to 1.44%, which is about 6 times of ZnO/CdTe NRASC.
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Fig. 1 (a) Schematic of the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe core–shell NRASC. (b and c) The energy level as well as the carrier transport and recombination path of ZnO/CdTe (b) and ZnO/TiO2/CdTe core–shell NRASC (c). |
For solar cell performance testing, all current density–voltage (J–V) curves were measured under ambient condition using a Keithley 2400 sourcemeter. The AM 1.5G simulated sunlight illumination of 100 mW cm−2 was obtained by a 94023A Oriel Sol3A solar simulator (Newport) and calibrated with a reference silicon solar cell. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was carried out in the dark at room temperature using a CHI 660E electrochemical workstation (Shanghai Chenhua Instruments Co.). Open-circuit voltage decay (OCVD) measurement was performed using a chopped 532 nm laser while monitoring the subsequent decay of the open-circuit voltage by an oscilloscope (Tektronix TDS 2012).
Fig. 2a reveals the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns taken from the bare ZnO, ZnO/TiO2 (2 nm) NRAs as well as the annealed ZnO/CdTe and ZnO/TiO2 (2 nm)/CdTe core–shell NRAs, respectively. For the bare ZnO NRs, besides the peaks of FTO, only ZnO (002) peak can be found, suggesting that the ZnO NRs grew dominantly along the c-axis orientation. The result for the ZnO/TiO2 (2 nm) sample is very similar to that of the bare ZnO. After the CdTe layer was deposited and annealed, three new diffraction peaks are observed at 23.74, 39.40 and 46.42°, which can be indexed to the (111), (220) and (311) planes of zinc-blende CdTe (JCPDS file no. 65-1085), respectively. No signal from the oxide phase, such as CdO or TeO2, can be detected. Moreover, the average grain size of CdTe for both ZnO/CdTe and ZnO/TiO2/CdTe samples are the same as about 20 nm, indicating the thin TiO2 layer has negligible effect on the crystallinity of the CdTe shells.
Fig. 2b shows the cross-sectional SEM image of a ZnO/TiO2 (2 nm) NRA on FTO substrate. The NRs show uniform morphology and the length is ∼360 nm. The microstructure and composition of the NRs were further investigated by TEM and EDS. Fig. 2c shows a typical HRTEM image of a single ZnO/TiO2 (2 nm) NR, the ZnO NR shows perfect single-crystal wurtzite structure with clear stacking along its c-axis, consistent with the XRD result in Fig. 2a. In addition, a uniform amorphous TiO2 thin layer can be found covering on the surface of the ZnO NR, whose thickness is estimated to be about 2 nm. The Ti element can be confirmed from the EDS result shown in the inset of Fig. 2c. Fig. 2d demonstrates the cross-sectional SEM image of an annealed ZnO/TiO2 (2 nm)/CdTe core–shell NRA, from which the very compacted film-like filling with few voids can be observed.
ZnO/TiO2/CdTe core–shell NRASCs with different TiO2 (0, 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 nm) thicknesses have been fabricated to investigate the effect of TiO2 layer on the photovoltaic performances. Fig. 3a and b show the typical steady-state J–V curves of the solar cells in the dark and under AM 1.5G illumination of 100 mW cm−2, respectively. As seen in Fig. 3a, all curves show the good rectifying behaviour and the positive dark current decreases with the increasing thickness of TiO2 layer. Fig. 3b demonstrates that the thin TiO2 layer can significantly improve the photovoltaic performance of the NRASCs. The thickness dependence of the NRASC performances, such as Jsc, Voc, FF and power conversion efficiency η, are further summarized in Fig. 3c and d (the detailed device characteristics are listed in Table S1†). Obviously, Voc increases by near 4-fold from 165 mV for ZnO/CdTe NRASC to 602 mV for ZnO/TiO2 (2 nm)/CdTe NRASC and saturates for ZnO/TiO2 (4 nm)/CdTe NRASC. At the same time, both Jsc and FF of the NRASCs increase slightly with the TiO2 layer thickness. Consequently, the overall power conversion efficiency of the ZnO/TiO2 (4 nm)/CdTe NRASC dramatically enhances and reaches up to 1.44%, about 6 times of the NRASC without TiO2.
We now turn to study the underlying reason in the following sections why the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe core–shell NRASC possesses much higher photovoltaic performance as compared to the ZnO/CdTe one. In principle, the photon to current conversion efficiency of a solar cell is dominantly determined by three processes including the photon absorption, the charge separation, and the carrier transport and collection. To investigate whether the interfacial thin TiO2 layer can alter the absorption of the solar cells, UV-Vis absorbance spectra were measured on the bare ZnO, ZnO/TiO2 (0.5, 1, 2, 4 nm), annealed ZnO/CdTe and ZnO/TiO2 (0.5, 1, 2, 4 nm)/CdTe NRAs and the results are shown in Fig. S1.† It is found that the ZnO and ZnO/TiO2 NRAs have the same absorption edge at ∼380 nm and the absorption intensity increases slightly with the thickness of TiO2 layer. However, for the ZnO/CdTe and ZnO/TiO2/CdTe core–shell NRAs, the absorption edge shifts obviously to 850 nm, consistent with the band gap of bulk CdTe.28,29 It is notable that the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRs with different TiO2 thicknesses have almost the same absorption behaviour, indicating that the CdTe shell is the dominant light-absorption material in the above mentioned core–shell nanostructures. Therefore, we can conclude that the enhanced photovoltaic performance of the NRASC after inserting TiO2 layer cannot be ascribed to the change of light absorption.
It is well known that a type II energy band alignment is beneficial for separating the photocarriers. For the case of ZnO/CdTe NRAs as shown in Fig. 1, this results in the photoinduced electrons of CdTe shell injecting into the ZnO core. In order to investigate whether the TiO2 interfacial layer will prompt the charge separation in the core–shell NRASCs, we measured the transient absorption spectra on the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRAs with different TiO2 thicknesses, since the method has been extensively practiced in photovoltaic devices.30–32 The measurements were performed on a 25 fs Ti:sapphire laser system. Each sample was excited by a 400 nm pump light and the excited state absorption signals were probed at 630 nm, the results are shown in Fig. S2.† As seen, the decay of the excited state absorption are almost the same and do not show any dependence on the thickness of TiO2, suggesting that the TiO2 layer has negligible contribution to the charge separation at the ZnO/CdTe interface.
It has been reported that the charge recombination has a notable impact on the Voc and the power conversion efficiency of solar cells.11,33,34 This can be understood by the band alignment as well as the electron transport and recombination path in the core–shell NRASC shown in Fig. 1b and c. Under light illumination, the photoinduced electron–hole pairs in the CdTe shell are separated rapidly at the interface; The electrons are injected into the ZnO and then transported to the FTO electrode, while the holes remain in the CdTe shell are collected by the Au electrode. However, the electrons would meanwhile recombine with the holes at the interface. At the open-circuit condition, the photocurrent exactly balances the forward bias current which is dependent on the recombination process. Therefore, low recombination decreases the forward bias current for p–n junction, which in turn shifts the balance at a higher Voc. In the case of ZnO/CdTe, as shown in Fig. 1b, the electrons in ZnO are easily trapped by the ZnO surface defects and recombine with the holes in CdTe, leading to the increase of the shunt current and decrease of the Voc. In sharp contrast, for ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRASCs as shown in Fig. 1c, a natural speculation is that the TiO2 layer could passivate the ZnO surface defects and act as a blocking layer to suppress the electron–hole recombination at the interface, thus increasing the shunt resistance and the Voc. The decrease of charge recombination at the interface after coating TiO2 can even been observed from the dark J–V curves, as shown in Fig. 3a, the dark-recombination current decreases as the TiO2 layer thickness increases at positive bias.
To further verify the passivation effect of the TiO2 layer on reducing the ZnO surface defects and improving the performance of the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRASC, three distinct experimental measurements, including photoluminescence (PL), impedance spectroscopy and open-circuit voltage decay behaviour are carried out sequentially. Room temperature PL was collected on bare ZnO NRA and ZnO/TiO2 (0.5, 1, 2 nm) NRAs, the results are shown in Fig. S3.† We can find that all of the PL spectra have the both emission bands of ZnO: a narrow peak from near band edge (NBE) emission at 375 nm and another broad band from deep level emission (DLE) around 565 nm. The origin of DLE is usually attributed to the surface defects of ZnO NR.35,36 As seen, after coating TiO2 layer on ZnO NR, the intensity of NBE increases whereas that of DLE decreases; specifically, the trend that the IDLE/INBE ratio decreases with the increasing thickness of TiO2 from 0 to 1 nm and gets saturated at 2 nm can be clearly observed in the inset of Fig. S3.† This finding suggests that the thin TiO2 layer can effectively passivate the surface defects of the ZnO NRs. As a result, the photovoltaic performance of the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRASC can be improved by virtue of the reduced charge recombination through the defects.
The impedance spectroscopy, which has been widely used to analyze the charge recombination process and electron lifetime in solar cells,37,38 was also measured here with a two-electrode configuration9 (the FTO as the working electrode and the Au electrode as both the counter- and the reference electrodes). We performed the experiment in the dark by applying a sinusoidal perturbation of 10 mV with the frequency changing from 100 kHz to 0.1 Hz. Fig. 4a shows the results of the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRASCs with the TiO2 thickness varying from 0 to 4 nm. The equivalent circuit of the solar cells is shown in the inset, where Rs is the series resistance, Rsh is the shunt resistance (interfacial charge recombination resistance) and C is the capacitance, respectively. Note that Rs is totally contributed from the ZnO nanorod, TiO2 passivation layer, CdTe shell, as well as their contact resistance with the electrodes, and consequently, it is dependent on the thickness of TiO2 layer. The electron lifetime tn can be determined from the time constant of the impedance spectrum according to:39,40
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The open-circuit voltage decay method was also applied to further investigate the charge recombination and electron lifetime of the solar cells.19,41,42 In each measure, the NRASC was first illuminated by a 532 nm laser to a steady Voc, then the incident light was turned off periodically using a chopper, and the subsequent decay of the Voc was monitored by an oscilloscope. When the light is turned off, the electrons in the ZnO NR will recombine with the holes in the CdTe shell. This shifts the electron quasi-Fermi level of the ZnO downwards and the hole quasi-Fermi level of the CdTe upwards, thus leading to the Voc getting smaller and smaller until the quasi-Fermi level of electron equilibrates in ZnO with that of hole in CdTe, i.e., the Voc becomes zero. Fig. 5a demonstrates the Voc–time decay traces of the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRASCs with different TiO2 thicknesses. As seen, the Voc of all devices decrease rapidly after turning off the light. It is important to find that the thicker the TiO2 layer, the longer the Voc decay time, demonstrating the unambiguous blocking effect of TiO2 on the carrier recombination. Quantitatively, the electron lifetime can be derived from the decay curve with following equation:41,43
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Fig. 5 Open-circuit voltage decay measurement for the ZnO/TiO2/CdTe NRASCs at room temperature. (a) Voc–time decay curves. (b) Electron lifetime as a function of Voc. |
Footnote |
† Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c5ra14204k |
This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015 |