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Electronic Properties of Modified CuGaSe2 Solar Cells

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Jehad A. AbuShama
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO 80401, U.S.A.
Steve W. Johnston
Affiliation:
1617 Cole Blvd., National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, U.S.A.
David L. Young
Affiliation:
1617 Cole Blvd., National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, U.S.A.
Rommel Noufi
Affiliation:
1617 Cole Blvd., National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, U.S.A.
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Abstract

We report on the electronic properties of the state-of the art surface-modified CuGaSe2 solar cells. We compare between the 10.2%-efficient surface-modified and the 9.53%-efficient unmodified CuGaSe2 solar cells. We examined our cells using deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) and drive level capacitance profiling (DLCP). The DLTS data for the modified CGS exhibits minority traps with activation energies ranging from Ec — 0.3 to Ec — 0.6 eV, whereas that for the pure CGS exhibits minority traps with activation energies ranging from Ec — 0.06 to Ec — 0.1 eV (where Ec is the energy of electrons at the conduction band minimum). While varying the filling pulse duration, we observed the gradual increase in the amplitude of the DLTS signal for these states until it apparently saturates at a pulse duration of ˜1s for the 10.2% cell, and 0.05 s for the 9.53% cell. Increasing the duration of the filling pulse also results in broadening of the DLTS signals and shifting of the maximum of these signals towards lower temperature, whereas the high-temperature sides coincide. Using a model that allows us to distinguish between bandlike states and localized ones based on the dependence of the shape of their DLTS-signal on the filling-pulse duration, we relate the electron trap to bandlike states. The DLCP data shows that the 10.2% cell has a lower carrier concentration, a more uniform defect density profile, a larger depletion width, and a higher drift collection length for photo-generated carriers as compared to our 9.53% CuGaSe2 cell. We also recorded the transient capacitance versus time and found that the 10.2% has responded differently compared with the 9.53% one. The transient capacitance decay curves for these two cells are different.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2005

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References

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