Titanium Oxynitride Deposition by Reactive Gas Pulsing Technique Aiming to Application in Grätzel Solar Cells
Abstract
The increase of worldwide population together with a constant need for new technologies that facilitate our lives, the energy demands has also increased all over the world. Once the non-renewable energies are exhaustible and highly polluting, the scientific community concentrates its efforts to develop more efficient and low cost energy producing from sources, such as, solar cells, wind energy, biomass and nuclear energy The nuclear sources have been widely employed in many countries as primary source for generation of electrical energy because its elevated conversion efficiency (Bela and Juergen, 1997). However, it is not a secure form to power generation as shown in the recent nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. This disaster has caused serious consequences for the worldwide population, and after this event, the need for renewable energy sources became even more evident. Among several renewable alternatives, the solar radiation is the form of energy most abundant in the planet. One way to obtain solar energy is by the absorption of solar radiation using flat panels that directly convert the absorbed in electrical energy through the photoelectric effect (Avrutin et al. 2011, Bhubaneswari et al. 2011, Adolf et al. 1998). Currently, p-n junction is the most common solar cells used worldwide due to its high conversion efficiency compared with other solar cells.