Nanoengineering and interfacial engineering of photovoltaics by atomic layer deposition

Abstract

Investment into photovoltaic (PV) research has accelerated over the past decade as concerns over energy security and carbon emissions have increased. The types of PV technology in which the research community is actively engaged are expanding as well. This review focuses on the burgeoning field of atomic layer deposition (ALD) for photovoltaics. ALD is a self-limiting thin film deposition technique that has demonstrated usefulness in virtually every sector of PV technology including silicon, thin film, tandem, organic, dye-sensitized, and next generation solar cells. Further, the specific applications are not limited. ALD films have been deposited on planar and nanostructured substrates and on inorganic and organic devices, and vary in thickness from a couple of angstroms to over 100 nm. The uses encompass absorber materials, buffer layers, passivating films, anti-recombination shells, and electrode modifiers. Within the last few years, the interest in ALD as a PV manufacturing technique has increased and the functions of ALD have expanded. ALD applications have yielded fundamental understanding of how devices operate and have led to increased efficiencies or to unique architectures for some technologies. This review also highlights new developments in high throughput ALD, which is necessary for commercialization. As the demands placed on materials for the next generation of PV become increasingly stringent, ALD will evolve into an even more important method for research and fabrication of solar cell devices.

Creating Highly Active Atomic Layer Deposited NiO Electrocatalysts for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction

“…[1][2][3] Consisting of a series of self-limited, saturated reactions, ALD offers an unrivaled ability to deposit thin, conformal fi lms with fi ne control over fi lm thickness and uniformity. [4][5][6] These advantages have been successfully leveraged to begin to address some of the most challenging problems for the photoelectrochemical (PEC) splitting of water, a process in which water is converted to oxygen and hydrogen that can later be used as fuel.…”

Incomplete elimination of precursor ligands during atomic layer deposition of zinc-oxide, tin-oxide, and zinc-tin-oxide

“…A typical metal-oxide ALD process consists of alternating exposure of a surface to a metal-organic precursor and to an oxidizing agent as the co-reactant. With the maturing of ALD technology, and with the exploration of novel applications in renewable energy technologies, 3,4 there is increasing interest in ALD processes that go beyond the deposition of binary materials to allow for the synthesis of alloyed, doped, ternary, or quaternary materials. 5,6 These multi-element materials are typically deposited by combining the cycles of two or more binary ALD processes in a so-called supercycle.…”

Spatial atomic layer deposition: A route towards further industrialization of atomic layer deposition

“…2 Recently, ALD has raised interest from new application areas, such as photovoltaics and organic electronics. Applications where ALD has displayed added value include surface passivation layers in crystalline silicon solar cells, 3 buffer layers in CuInGa(Se,S) (CIGS) as an alternative to chemical bath deposition (CBD) CdS, 3 and moisture diffusion barrier layers for OLEDs and thin film photovoltaics. 4 These applications; however, require high-throughput and low-cost production techniques to make them economically viable.…”