Effect of feeding flow rate on characteristics of CuInSe2 films prepared by flash evaporation

Abstract

Copper indium selenide CuInSe2 (CISe) is one of the most promising absorber materials in high efficiency heterojunction thin-film solar cells due to its high conversion efficiency and known high stability. This paper describes a simple method for preparing CuInSe2 films from pre-prepared CuInSe2 ingot powder using a flash evaporation method. The primary goal of this work is to investigate the effect of feeding flow rate on CuInSe2 film characteristics. The powder feeding flow rate into the evaporator has been adjusted to control the film growth rate. Structure, composition, morphology, electrical and optical properties have all been studied for films deposited at different feeding flow rates. The results show that varying the feeding flow rate affects film characteristics, and that lower feeding rates yield films with better characteristics, which should be considered in future semiconductor film processing.