Efficient Copper‐Doped Antimony Sulfide Thin‐Film Solar Cells via Coevaporation Method

Abstract

Sb 2 S 3 being a light-absorbing material is used for photovoltaic (PV) application due to its superior stability and progressive power conversion efficiency (PCE) benefiting from its low cost, less toxic, earth-abundant, and facile nature. Due to the difficulty in efficient doping for such 1D structure, the performance of as-fabricated thin-film solar cells is limited by high resistivity and hole extraction barrier. Herein, a coevaporation scheme is introduced for copper-doped Sb 2 S 3 by rapid thermal evaporation (RTE). The Cu-doped Sb 2 S 3 thin film discloses the enhanced crystallinity with a grain diameter greater than 1 μm and conductivity along with improved carrier concentration. At the same time, the deep valance band obtains a minor upshift, favoring the hole extraction at back contact. Consequently, all the PV parameters are enhanced leading to the PCE boosting from 4.18% to 4.61%. Herein, a facile doping technique is demonstrated to improve its performance without any modification of the present RTE method.

High Open‐Circuit Voltage in Full‐Inorganic Sb2S3 Solar Cell via Modified Zn‐Doped TiO2 Electron Transport Layer

“…A planar superstrate structure was adopted to compare the performance of solar cells based on different ETLs ( Figure a). From the UV–vis absorption spectra of the Sb 2 S 3 films (Figure S3, Supporting Information), the extracted bandgap of 1.68 eV was close to the previously reported value, [ 8 ] providing essential information for the energy‐level alignment, as shown in Figure 5b. A series of photovoltaic devices with different Zn concentrations were fabricated by changing Zn‐content in the TiO 2 solution.…”

“…A compact, uniform, and highly crystalline ETL plays a crucial role in the morphology of post‐deposited absorber layers. [ 8 ] Thus, a significant impact on device performance was expected with a uniform and compact Zn‐TiO 2 ETL. The crystallinity of pure TiO 2 and Zn‐TiO 2 was characterized by X‐ray diffraction (XRD) (Figure S1, Supporting Information).…”

“…042‐1393). [ 8 ] From the cross‐section SEM image of optimized ETL and absorber layer, the thicknesses were measured as 80 and 600 nm, respectively (Figure 4d).…”

“…For this affection, epitaxial growth mechanism has been recently sightseen and a noticeable improvement was reported by Deng et al [4] Different elemental doping in Sb 2 S 3 has been investigated to enhance the device performances, [5][6][7] among copper doping was explicitly introduced to boost the carrier concentration of Sb 2 S 3 film by emerging vertical orientations and to balance its energy levels. [8] Though huge attention has been attributed to improve the quality of Sb 2 S 3 thin film, the achieved efficiency for this potentially valuable material is still much beyond its predicted limit. [9] In addition, a high-quality photovoltaic absorber material, the interface quality inside the device where charge carrier separation and transfer occur also plays a vital character in the performance of a solar cell.…”

Wide Bandgap Sb2S3 Solar Cells

“…[18a] Copyright 2010, Royal Society of Chemistry. [31] ITO/CdS/Sb 2 S 3 /Au RTE e) 0.71 10.8 45.5 3.5 2016/ [32] ITO/CdS c) /Sb 2 S 3 a) [33] FTO/c-TiO 2 /Sb 2 S 3 (Se-treated)/Au RTE 0.69 15.3 51.2 5.4 2019/ [26] FTO/c-TiO 2 /Cu-doped Sb 2 S 3 /Au RTE 0.64 15.16 47.64 4.61 2019/ [34] Mo/Sb 2 S 3 a)…”