TITLE:
Texture ZnO Thin-Films and their Application as Front Electrode in Solar Cells
AUTHORS:
Yue-Hui Hu, Yi-Chuan Chen, Hai-Jun Xu, Hao Gao, Wei-Hui Jiang, Fei Hu, Yan-Xiang Wang
KEYWORDS:
Textured ZnO Thin-Film, Solar Cells Front Electrode, Magnetron Sputtering, Transparent Conducting Oxide, Surface Of Micrograph, SnO2:F
JOURNAL NAME:
Engineering,
Vol.2 No.12,
January
10,
2011
ABSTRACT: In this paper, three kinds of textured ZnO thin-films (the first kind has the textured structure with both columnar and polygon, the second posses pyramid-like textured structure only, and the third has the textured structure with both crater-like and pyramid-like), were prepared by three kinds of methods, and the application of these ZnO thin-films as a front electrode in solar cell was studied, respectively. In the first method with negative bias voltage and appropriate sputtering parameters, the textured structure with columnar and polygon on the surface of ZnO thin-film are both existence for the sample prepared by direct magnetron sputtering. Using as a front electrode in solar cell, the photoelectric conversion efficiency Eff of 7.00% was obtained. The second method is that by sputtering on the ZnO:Al self-supporting substrate, and the distribution of pyramid-like was gained. Moreover, the higher (8.25%) photoelectric conversion efficiency of solar cell was got. The last method is that by acid-etching the as-deposited ZnO thin-film which possesses mainly both columnar and polygon structure, and the textured ZnO thin-film with both crater-like and pyramid-like structure was obtained, and the photoelectric conversion efficiency of solar cell is 7.10% when using it as front electrode. These results show that the textured ZnO thin-film prepared on self-supporting substrate is more suitable for using as a front electrode in amorphous silicon cells.