Microstructural and Optical Properties of Sb₂S₃ Film Thermally Evaporated from Antimony Pentasulfide and Efficient Planar Solar Cells

Abstract

Antimony sulfide (Sb2S3) thin film is a promising light absorber for solar cell application due to its suitable bandgap, high absorption coefficient, and non‐toxic constituents. However, thermally evaporated Sb2S3 thin films experience sulfur loss during evaporation and post‐annealing, which do harm to the film quality and the performance of the devices. In this work, for the first time Sb2S3 thin films are prepared by thermally evaporating antimony pentasulfide (Sb2S5) precursor. The thermal and microstructural properties of Sb2S3 and Sb2S5 precursors are studied and compared. The crystallization of the Sb2S3 film (S‐5) prepared from Sb2S5 precursor is inferior to that (S‐3) from Sb2S3 powder. And the annealed S‐5 film shows a larger bandgap of 1.69 eV than S‐3. However, compared with S‐3, planar S‐5 thin film solar cells in the configuration of glass/(SnO2:F) FTO/TiO2/Sb2S3/Spiro‐OMeTAD/Ag exhibit an apparently improved photovoltaic performance, with the best power conversion efficiency of 3.75% and high fill factor of 0.56, which is the highest efficiency of thermally evaporated planar Sb2S3 solar cell. The capacitance–voltage (C–V) measurement indicates that this might come from the higher C–V derived space‐charge density in S‐5. This work offers a new method to prepare Sb2S3 thin films for efficient solar cells.

Composition engineering of Sb2S3 film enabling high performance solar cells

“…For the device based on P-Sb 2 S 3 film, it delivers a short-circuit current density (J sc ) of 15.15 mA cm À2 , open-circuit voltage (V oc ) of 0.67 V and fill factor (FF) of 51.1%, corresponding to a PCE of 5.2%. This efficiency is higher than the reported device efficiency with thermal evaporation derived Sb 2 S 3 film in literature which is generally below 5% [14,22,23]. With regard to sulfur doping, the device generates a PCE of 5.8%.…”

Uniform Sb2S3optical coatings by chemical spray method

“…4,D, Figure S9C,D) range from 100 nm to over 10 µm in size. These agglomerates, consisting of smaller grains separated by ridges, resemble the surface morphology of 300 nm thick polycrystalline Sb 2 S 3 films grown via thermal evaporation and annealed for 10 min at 300 °C in N 2 [35], and that of metal halide perovskites obtained by Volmer–Weber growth via hot casting [36]. The layers deposited at 220 °C from both Sb/S 1:3 and Sb/S 1:6 solutions, and thermally treated at 170 °C, consist of numerous grains and pinholes (3-220-170, Fig.…”

Semitransparent Sb2S3 thin film solar cells by ultrasonic spray pyrolysis for use in solar windows

“…We demonstrated that by adapting a two-step sequence, whereby amorphous Sb 2 S 3 layers are first deposited by USP and then crystallized by thermal annealing, compact Sb 2 S 3 thin films with uniform thickness can be fabricated [46]. Similarly, a two-step procedure to grow compact Sb 2 S 3 thin films has become common practice for many deposition techniques [18–20 27,29,31,35,47]. To summarize: in order to achieve progress in the various areas of PV applications, e.g., BIPV, and to increase the availability of PV beyond the state-of-the-art in compliance with ever stricter safety and health regulations, novel thin film solar cell designs are required, using abundant non-toxic materials and implementing cost-effective solar cell fabrication technologies.…”