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Applied Sciences
Special Issues
The Latest Progress of Thin Film Solar Cells
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The Latest Progress of Thin Film Solar Cells

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Science and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2021) | Viewed by 3401

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Chia-Hua Huang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien 974301, Taiwan
Interests: CIGS-based solar cells; hydrogen-related sensors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Different from wafer-based solar cells, such as crystalline Si and III-V solar cells, photovoltaic devices employing glass substrates or flexible substrates are nominally classified as thin film solar cells. Although crystalline Si modules are dominant in the PV market, the production quantities of thin-film compound semiconductor modules are still persistently growing. Moreover, flexible thin film solar cells offer a wide range of applications as well. Rapid and remarkable progress is being made in both the conversion efficiencies and process development of thin film solar cells in recent years. Champion thin film solar cells such as CIGS and perovskite solar cells have reached efficiencies of 23.35% and 24.2%, respectively, which have surpassed that of the best multicrystalline Si solar cells. It is believed that there is still room for the efficiencies of thin film solar cells to be further enhanced.

This Special Issue is intended to shed light on the key issues of thin film solar cells covering the ideas or concepts to enhance cell and module efficiencies, approaches for low-cost fabrication, development or optimization of deposition or synthesis processes, characterization of thin film photovoltaic materials, and theoretical investigation.

The topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

  • Amorphous and microcrystal Si solar cells;
  • CIGS-based solar cells;
  • CZTS-based solar cells;
  • CdTe solar cells;
  • Dye-sensitized solar cells;
  • Organic solar cells;
  • Perovskite solar cells.

It is my great honor to cordially invite you to submit contributions about your latest progress and development in thin film solar cells to this Special Issue.

Prof. Chia-Hua Huang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Amorphous and microcrystal Si solar cells 
  • CIGS-based solar cells 
  • CZTS-based solar cells 
  • CdTe solar cells 
  • Dye-sensitized solar cells 
  • Organic solar cells
  • Perovskite solar cells

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 71644 KiB  
Article
Investigation of Microcrystalline Silicon Thin Film Fabricated by Magnetron Sputtering and Copper-Induced Crystallization for Photovoltaic Applications
by Omid Shekoofa, Jian Wang, Dejie Li and Yi Luo
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(18), 6320; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10186320 - 10 Sep 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3098
Abstract
Microcrystalline silicon, which is widely used in the microelectronics industry, is usually fabricated by chemical vapor deposition techniques. In recent years, magnetron sputtering has been considered as an alternative because it is a simpler, cheaper and more eco-friendly technique. The big drawback of [...] Read more.
Microcrystalline silicon, which is widely used in the microelectronics industry, is usually fabricated by chemical vapor deposition techniques. In recent years, magnetron sputtering has been considered as an alternative because it is a simpler, cheaper and more eco-friendly technique. The big drawback of this technique, however, is the need to recrystallize the as-deposited amorphous silicon, which can be done by metal-induced crystallization. Among the different suitable metals, copper has not been extensively investigated for this purpose. Furthermore, the applicability of the microcrystalline film prepared by this method has not been evaluated for photovoltaic device fabrication. Therefore, this paper reports the fabrication of p-type microcrystalline silicon thin film by magnetron sputtering and copper-induced crystallization techniques, and evaluates its appropriateness for solar cell fabrication. In the first step, 60 nm of silicon followed by 10 nm of copper were deposited on n-type silicon wafer and glass substrates, both by the magnetron sputtering technique. Then, the as-deposited samples were annealed at temperatures from 450 °C to 950 °C. The crystal properties of the resulting films were characterized by Raman and X-ray diffraction spectroscopies and optical and secondary emission microscopies, while their electrical characteristics were determined by Hall-effect, J-V curve and external quantum efficiency measurements. These characterizations confirmed the formation of a layer of microcrystalline silicon mostly in the <111> direction with a crystallization ratio of 93% and a largest grain size of 20 nm. The hole concentration and mobility of the fabricated p-type microcrystalline silicon layer were about 1017~1019 cm−3 and 8 cm2/V.s, respectively. By using the fabricated film as the emitter layer of a p-n junction solar cell, a good rectification ratio of 4100 and reverse saturation current density of 85 nA.cm−2 were measured under dark conditions. The highest photovoltaic conversion efficiency, i.e., 2.6%, with an open-circuit voltage of 440 mV and short-circuit current density of 16.7 mA/cm2, were measured under AM1.5G irradiance. These results indicate that microcrystalline silicon created by magnetron sputtering and copper-induced crystallization has considerable potential for photovoltaic device fabrication. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Latest Progress of Thin Film Solar Cells)
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