Highly stable transparent and conducting gallium-doped zinc oxide thin films for photovoltaic applications

Fabrication, charge carrier transport, and application of printable nanocomposites based on indium tin oxide nanoparticles and conducting polymer 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene/polystyrene sulfonic acid

“…12 Most frequently used doped single-cation TCO materials are indium tin oxide (ITO), zinc oxide (e.g., ZnO:Al, Ga) and fluorine or antimony doped tin oxide. [13][14][15] However, also multi-cation oxide TCOs have been developed and show a growing interest in the last few years. 16,17 Thin films from these materials are commonly fabricated by physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques, such as sputtering or thermal evaporation, and provide high-quality coatings but are rather expensive due to vacuum processing.…”

Oxide semiconductors: Order within the disorder

“…To produce the pn heterojunction solar cells, doped p-type crystalline silicon substrates (p-type c-Si, 2.5×2.5 cm in size), 150 µm thick and with an acceptor concentration in the range of 5-10×10 16 at.cm -3 were used. The polished surfaces of the crystalline silicon substrate were cleaned (etching the native oxide with a buffered HF solution) and properly rinsed prior to the deposition of the back metal contact by e-beam evaporation, composed by a double layer of silver and chromium (Ag/Cr), 200 nm thick.…”

“…Due to cost increase of indium and the need to have films able to sustain a hydrogen plasma discharge during the deposition process [8], zinc aluminum oxide (ZAO) [9][10][11][12][13] and zinc gallium oxide (ZGO) have been developed as a promising alternative to ITO, since zinc (Zn) is a quite abundant (about 10 3 more than In [14]) and "green" material. Besides that, gallium (Ga) has a better doping efficiency than aluminum (Al), allowing room temperature processing [12,15,16]. For these films, the conductivity improvement has been associated with the crystal order and corresponding grain size.…”

Nanostructured silicon and its application to solar cells, position sensors and thin film transistors

“…These data cannot be compared with industry data where the devices are differently processed, as are the recent reported data from MVSystems and United Solar for instance [64][65][66][67][68][69]. The aim is to prove the consistency of the laboratory results [63] and the integration of these nanostructured silicon thin films in device structure such as solar cells, thin film position sensitive detectors and thin film transistors.…”