† Corresponding author. E-mail:
Project supported by the National Key R & D Program of China (Grant Nos. 2019YFB1503500, 2018YFE0203400, and 2018YFB1500200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. U1902218), the YangFan Innovative and Entrepreneurial Research Team Project of China (Grant No. 2014YT02N037), and the 111 Project, China (Grant No. B16027).
Sb2S3 solar cells with substrate structure usually suffer from pretty low short circuit current (JSC) due to the defects and poor carrier transport. The Sb2S3, as a one-dimensional material, exhibits orientation-dependent carrier transport property. In this work, a thin MoSe2 layer is directly synthesized on the Mo substrate followed by depositing the Sb2S3 thin film. The x-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns confirm that a thin MoSe2 layer can improve the crystallization of the Sb2S3 film and induce (hk1) orientations, which can provide more carrier transport channels. Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) results suggest that this modified Sb2S3 film has a benign surface with less defects and dangling bonds. The variation of the surface potential of Sb2S3 indicates a much more efficient carrier separation. Consequently, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the substrate structured Sb2S3 thin film solar cell is improved from 1.36 % to 1.86 %, which is the best efficiency of the substrate structured Sb2S3 thin film solar cell, and JSC significantly increases to 13.6 mA/cm2. According to the external quantum efficiency (EQE) and C–V measurements, the modified crystallization and elevated built-in electric field are the main causes.
Recently, Sb2S3 has received great attention for the application in solar cell. It possesses many good properties, such as a proper bandgap of ∼ 1.7 eV, high light absorption coefficient ( > 105 cm–1), earth abundance, nontoxic source, etc.[1,2] Sb2S3, as a binary semiconductor compound, can keep a single phase and avoid forming the unfavorable secondary phase at high temperature,[3] which makes it a good alternative to Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS), Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS), and CdTe absorber layers. In particular, the large bandgap provides a promising utilization for tandem dual-junction solar cells.[4]
Up to now, the highest efficient (7.5 %) Sb2S3 solar cell is achieved by the semiconductor-sensitized device structure with glass/TCO/TiO2/Sb2S3/polymer.[5] As sensitized solar cells inevitably suffer from interface degradation and device instability. To improve the device stability, much more attention is shifted to the planar structured Sb2S3 solar cell. A few techniques have been used to synthesize the Sb2S3 thin films, like chemical bath deposition,[6] solution spin coating,[7] pulse electrodeposition,[8] sputtering with post-annealing,[9] and thermal evaporation.[10] Owing to the low melting point of Sb2S3 (∼ 550°C), it can be synthesized at low temperatures (∼ 350 °C) with good crystalline quality in a short time.[11] Hence, for the planar heterojunction Sb2S3 thin film solar cells, rapid thermal evaporation (RTE) is a promising approach to implement the large scale industrial preparation. At present, most of Sb2S3 solar cells are based on the superstrate-structured solar cell: glass/FTO/TiO2(or CdS)/Sb2S3/Au. In 2016, Yuan et al. fabricated Sb2S3 thin film solar cells with large grains and preferential growth by optimizing the rapid thermal evaporation and cooling techniques, achieving a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 3.5 %.[11] As a one-dimensional ribbon material, the intra-ribbons are dominated by the covalent bonds, and the ribbons are bonded with each other by Van der Waals force. Thus, Sb2S3 exhibits strong anisotropy in optical and electrical properties.[12] Theoretically, most of Sb2S3 based devices are orientation-dependent. For this concern, Deng et al. successfully obtained vertical (hk1) orientated Sb2S3 by engineering TiO2 exposure facets, which significantly improved the interface quality and intra-ribbon transport.[13] As reported previously, different substrates affect both the morphology and the crystal structure orientation of Sb2S3 grains.[14] The orientation of Sb2S3 can be tailored by modifying the substrate. The Sb2S3 solar cells with superstrate structure show good performances, but it is difficult to further improve the PCEs due to their simple device structures. For the purpose of thorough scientific study, substrate configuration of glass/Mo/Sb2S3/CdS/i-ZnO/Al-ZnO/Ni:Al is beneficial to engineer the junction interface and improve the spectral matching, which may have potential for the flexible and tandem application. In 2017, Zhang et al. prepared Sb2S3 thin film on Mo substrate by evaporating metallic Sb and then annealing in N2/H2S atmosphere. The best PCE of the resulting solar cells was 0.65 %.[15] Later, Pan et al. systematically studied the effect of the substrate temperature and evaporation time on Sb2S3 thin films deposited by rapid thermal evaporation (RTE), and the PCE was increased up to 1.75 %.[16] As mentioned in many reports, the Sb2S3 film suffers from the parallel orientation (hk0) to the substrate, especially on the Mo substrate, resulting in an unsatisfying carrier transport and large series resistance, which is detrimental for device performance.[10,11,15–18] To induce (hk1) preferred orientations, an extra MoSe2 layer is taken into consideration. It is reported that the MoSe2 possesses two-dimensional semiconductor property. Each monolayer is bonded by covalence in the order of Se–Mo–Se and all layers are stacked by weak Van der Waals interaction.[19] Wu et al. demonstrated that a few layers of MoSe2 exhibit good electrical conductivity.[20] Thereby, a MoSe2/Mo substrate is supposed to be a good alternative.
In this work, a MoSe2 layer is applied to the Sb2S3 thin film solar cell with the substrate configuration of glass/Mo(MoSe2)/Sb2S3/CdS/iZO/AZO/Ni:Al. Systematic characterizations are employed to reveal the influence of the thin MoSe2 layer on the Sb2S3 thin film growth and resulting solar cell. Finally, the PCE of the Sb2S3 thin film solar cell is increased from 1.36 % to 1.86 %, especially, the short circuit current JSC rises from 7.11 mA/cm2 to 13.6 mA/cm2.
A two-layer structured Mo film was deposited on soda-lime glass by DC-magnetron sputtering. A pre-selenization process was carried out by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) in a quartz tube with two heating zones. The 300 mg selenium powder (99.999 % purity, Alfa Aesar) and Mo substrate were located in the center of each hot zone with temperatures of 250 °C and 550 °C, respectively. The reaction was lasted for 10 min with 20 sccm Ar carrying gas flow.[20] After that, the Sb2S3 film was prepared by rapid thermal evaporation in a single temperature tube furnace, the substrate was maintained at 310 °C for 15 min, then rapidly rose up to 530 °C in 30 s, the evaporation duration was 100 s followed by natural cooling.[16]
Sb2S3 thin film solar cells were fabricated with substrate structure of glass/Mo (MoSe2)/Sb2S3/CdS/iZO/AZO/Ni:Al. The CdS buffer layer was deposited on the Sb2S3 absorber by chemical bath deposition (CBD) at 75 °C for 9 min followed by sputtering 50 nm intrinsic ZnO and 500 nm ZnO:Al as the widow layer. Finally, the front electrode Ni:Al grid was prepared by electron beam evaporation, and the active area of each Sb2S3 solar cell was 0.18 cm2.
The crystal structure of the Sb2S3 film was characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD) with Cu Kα radiation source (PANalytical X’pert pro). The lattice vibration of MoSe2 was analyzed by Raman spectrum at room temperature with 532 nm excitation wavelength (Horiba JobinYvon, LabRAM HR800). And the surface and cross-sectional morphologies of the Sb2S3 thin films were measured by scanning electric microscopy (SEM, Hitachi S-4800). The atomic force microscopy (AFM) (Dimension Icon, Bruker) was used to characterize the surface topography and thickness of the MoSe2 film with an area of 5μm2. Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) was used to detect the contact potential difference of the films, which was equipped with a Pt coated Si tip with 6 nm radius of curvature (HYDRA6R-100NG-10, APPNABQ) as the probe in a noncontact mode, and the AC voltage was adjusted by the instrument according to the films. The ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS; Kratos, UK) was conducted to detect the work function of the Sb2S3 and molybdenum electrode by using He I radiation (21.2 eV) as the excitation source. The work function of the film can be calculated by Φ = hν – (Ecutoff – EF). The current density–voltage (J–V) characteristics of the Sb2S3 thin film solar cells were measured by a solar simulator (SAN-EI XES-500T1), which was calibrated by a standard single crystal Si solar cell, under the standard AM1.5 spectrum with an illumination intensity of 1000 W/m2 at room temperature. The capacitance–voltage (C–V) measurement was performed with a HP 4284A LCR meter in darkness at room temperature, the frequency and bias parameter were 100 KHz and 30 mV, respectively. The external quantum efficiency (EQE) of the Sb2S3 thin film solar cells was measured by Beijing Zolix Solar Cell Scan 100, which measured the ratio of short circuit photocurrent to incident illumination intensity in a wavelength range of 300–1300 nm.
In this work, a bare Mo substrate is exposed to the Se atmosphere for 10 min to form MoSe2 first. The Ar flow is used as the carrying gas during this process. Figure
Then the Sb2S3 absorbers are deposited on the Mo and MoSe2/Mo substrates by RTE. Figure
The top view and cross-sectional SEM images of the Sb2S3 films deposited on Mo and MoSe2/Mo substrates are shown in Figs.
To explore the influence of the modified Sb2S3 orientations on the transport of carriers, KPFM is characterized and used to detect Sb2S3 surface contact potential difference (CPD).[23,24] Figure
Sb2S3 thin film solar cells are fabricated with substrate configuration of glass/Mo (MoSe2)/Sb2S3/CdS/iZO/AZO/Ni:Al. The device parameter distributions in Figs.
The C–V measurement is employed to get further insight into the JSC enhancement. The abrupt p–n+ heterojunction can be viewed as a parallel-plate capacitor model. We can obtain the carrier concentration, depletion width, and built-in potential (Vbi) from the following equations:[29,30]
Compared with the Sb2S3 solar cell without MoSe2, the sample with MoSe2 shows short Wd (647 nm) and great carrier density (1.8 × 1016 cm–3). Furthermore, the Ein of this device is almost twice as large as that of the sample reported in the literature. The large Ein will facilitate the carrier separation, which is consistent with the result of KPFM, thus contributes to an enhanced JSC. We also note that the built-in potential of the Sb2S3 solar cell with MoSe2 is 538 mV, which is higher than 347 mV of the control-one, but the VOC improvement is not notable, which is considered to be neutralized by the decreased band gap.
We fabricate Sb2S3 thin film solar cells with substrate configuration of glass/Mo (MoSe2)/Sb2S3/CdS/iZO/AZO/Ni:Al grid. A thin MoSe2 layer is developed before the deposition of the Sb2S3 thin film. The schematical investigation indicates that a thin MoSe2 layer with refined micro-structure can increase the (hk1) orientation of Sb2S3, providing more carrier transport channels. The concentrated CPD distribution from KPFM suggests less interface defects and dangling bonds on the surface of Sb2S3 on the MoSe2/Mo substrate. What is more, the CPD variations in both samples confirm an improvement of electrons barrier at GBs, which will facilitate the carrier separation. Consequently, the PCE of the Sb2S3 solar cell is improved from 1.36 % to 1.86 % by inserting the MoSe2 layer between the Sb2S3 laye layer and the Mo layer. The JSC dramatically increases from 7.11 mA/cm2 to 13.6 mA/cm2. EQE and C–V measurements further disclose the role of MoSe2 in enhancing JSC for this optimal device. The MoSe2 can not only improve the crystallization of Sb2S3 with (hk1) orientation, but also serve as a light tapping texture. Moreover, a small amount of Se is supposed to diffuse into Sb2S3 during the heating process, which is considered to passivate the deep defects and promote the device performance.
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