Characterization of Cu(InGa)Se₂ (CIGS) thin films in solar cell devices

Abstract

Cu(InGa)Se 2 (CIGS) thin-film solar cells are expected to be the next generation of solar cells because of their economical manufacturing cost and high yield process. In order to develop an efficient thin-film CIGS structure, however, a quantitative composition analysis of major elements is necessary. Quantitative analysis of CIGS was carried out by means of inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), x-ray fluorescence, a wavelength-dispersed electron probe microanalysis (EPMA), and dynamic SIMS. The ratio of each element that comprises CIGS was determined by an ICP-AES analysis, which was performed by dissolving the entire CIGS sample. A reproducible and rapid semi-quantified analysis of CIGS can be conducted by using x-ray fluorescence and electron probe microanalysis and comparing the results to the certified composition of ICP-AES. Quantitative analysis data for CIGS were also obtained from SIMS depth profiling, and the relative sensitivity factor value was calculated by using the mole fraction of ICP-AES as a reference value for the composition. The atomic force microscopy results indicate that the reproducibility of the SIMS analysis was related to the surface roughness of the CIGS sample.

High‐Performance and Industrially Viable Nanostructured SiOx Layers for Interface Passivation in Thin Film Solar Cells

“…Consequently, to further understand the effect of the passivation layer on the Na distribution in the CIGS and the effects on final devices, more measurements, such as SIMS, X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS), and particle‐induced X‐ray emission (PIXE), should be conducted to complement the GDOES measurement. [ 74-78 ]…”

2013 Atomic spectrometry update—A review of advances in X-ray fluorescence spectrometry

“…The Al 2 O 3 -coated TiO 2 powder was characterised by SEM and XRF methods, and the overall conversion efficiency of DSSCs as a result of applying the Al 2 O 3 -coated TiO 2 light scattering layer increased from 5.07% to 6.46%. Lim et al 393 also used XRF to characterise CIGS thin lms in solar cell devices, which are expected to be the next generation of solar cells because of their economical manufacturing cost and high conversion efficiency. To develop an efficient thin-lm CIGS structure, however, quantitative compositional analysis of major elements was claimed to be necessary by these authors.…”

Local photocurrent mapping and cell performance behaviour on a nanometre scale for monolithically interconnected Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells

“…Various surface‐analysis techniques including transmission electron microscopy (Wada et al ., ), atomic force microscopy and X‐ray microscopy (Lim et al ., ) have been used to study the morphology of solar cells. However, these methods suffer from a lack of direct information about the effect of the nanoscale features of the device.…”