Why are kesterite solar cells not 20% efficient?
By S. Siebentritt. 2013
348 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Although kesterite solar cells show the same range of band gaps as the related chalcopyrites, their efficiencies have so far reached only 10%, compared with 20% for the chalcopyrites. A review of the present literature indicates that several non-ideal recombination channels pose the main problem: (i) recombination at the interface between the kesterite and the CdS buffer. This is very likely due to an unfavourable cliff-like band alignment between the absorber and the buffer. However, for pure selenide absorbers, this recombination path is not dominating, which could be due to a spike-like band alignment at the absorber–buffer interface. (ii) A second major recombination becomes obvious in a photoluminescence maximum well below the band gap, even in record efficiency absorbers. This is either due to a very high density of defects, comparable to the density of states in the band, or to stannite inclusions. In view of the phase diagram, secondary phases are not likely the source of the low energy emission. Only in sulphide kesterite a non-stoichiometric SnS phase could also cause this low energy radiative recombination.
Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a71c63b0ed89afe20a4267d29c6bdd058ba804e7
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Citations in the corpus
- On the origin of band-tails in kesterite (2017, positive): “The presence of the band distortions and defects considerably rise the absorption coefficient below the band-gap energy and thus are responsible for the strong red-shift of the room temperature PL with respect to the band-gap energy reported in record solar cells, which limits the open-circuit volta”