Challenges for the Development of Inkjet Printed Cu_2(Zn,Sn)(S,Se)_4 Thin Film Solar Cell
Abstract
Inkjet printing technique is a material-conserving technique, which can greatly reduce the production cost by reducing the wastage of materials during the deposition. Additionally, this method can be easily adapted to Roll-to-Roll processing for large-scale application. The most challenging issues that remain open for multi- component system such as Cu2ZnSn(SxSe1-x)4 (CZTSSe) are: (1) Formulation of long-term stability raw material ink and (2) Optimization of electronic and electrical properties for high efficiency solar cell. We developed two different methods for ink formulation. The first one is based on preparation of nanoparticles such as ZnS, SnS and Cu3SnS4. The second method consists of metal salt precursors dissolved in organic solvents. We use metal salt solutions containing Cu, Sn, Zn and S precursors dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to prepare the ink. We used two deposition techniques (spin coating, inkjet printing) for the preparation of absorber layers. Both method lead to the production of kesterite films. However the metal salt based ink is well adapted to inkjet printing and the resulting solar cells with glass/Mo/CZTSSe/CdS/ZnO structure show total area (0.5 cm2) efficiency of 6.4 %.
Keywords
Inkjet printing, Kesterite, Thin film solar cell