Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Inorganic thin-film solar cells

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/5m60qw91g

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  • The primary objective of this thesis is to explore new absorber and p-type window layer materials for thin-film solar cell applications. A new thin-film electron beam deposition system has been installed, is now operational, and has been used to deposit several types of solar cell absorber layers. Material investigations include iron silicon sulfide (Fe2SiS4) and barium copper tin selenide (BaSn2SnSe4) for absorber applications, and barium copper tellurium fluoride (BCTF) for p-type window layer applications. A key issue identified is related to difficulties associated with assessing new absorber materials without fabricating a complete, optimized solar cell. Two attempts to insert BCTFinto a thin-film solar cell were undertaken, involving copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) and cadmium telluride (CdTe). The CIGS attempt was unsuccessful because of BCTF diffusion into CIGS during the CIGS deposition at 550 C. BCTF insertion into a CdTe thin-film solar cell was partially successful, as it resulted in better performance than the control cell. However, these experiments were confounded by a time-dependant degradation of the quality of the CdTe back surface after the CdTe undergoes a CdCl2 in oxygen post-deposition treatment, which is attributed to the effects of humidity at solar cell edges. Modern Schottky barrier and heterojunction theory is used in modeling thin-film solar cells. Analysis using this theory predicts that the CdTe/gold and CIGS/molybdenum (ignoring the possibility of MoSe2 interfacial formation) interface should form poor quality, rectifying (non- ohmic) contacts whereas the CdTe/BCTF/aluminium interface is predicted to function as a high- quality (ohmic) p-type window layer in a CdTe thin-film solar cell.
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