Improvement of p -CuO/ n -Si Heterojunction Solar Cell Performance Through Nitrogen Plasma Treatment
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-020-08593-x Ó 2020 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
ASIAN CONSORTIUM ACCMS–INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ICMG 2020
Improvement of p-CuO/n-Si Heterojunction Solar Cell Performance Through Nitrogen Plasma Treatment SHAIK MD. ABZAL,1 JATIS KUMAR DASH ,1,6 CHANDRESWAR MAHATA,2 ASIM GUCHHAIT,3 AVISHEK KUMAR,4 SEERAM RAMAKRISHNA,5 and GOUTAM KUMAR DALAPATI1,5,7 1.—Department of Physics, SRM University AP, Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh 522503, India. 2.—School of Electronics Engineering, Chungbuk National University, Cheongju 28644, Republic of Korea. 3.—Department of Physics, P. K. College, Contai, West Bengal 721404, India. 4.—Sunkonnect, 1 Cleantech Loop, Singapore 637141, Singapore. 5.—Center for Nanofibers and Nanotechnology, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore. 6.—e-mail: [email protected]. 7.—e-mail: [email protected]
p-type cupric oxide (p-CuO) thin films on n-type silicon substrates were grown to make p-CuO/n-Si heterojunctions. The CuO deposition on Si was carried out using radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering followed by rapid thermal annealing at 350°C. Plasma nitridation was used to incorporate nitrogen (N) for improving the electrical conductivity of the CuO thin films. The crystalline structure and surface composition of RF-sputtered CuO were characterized by x-ray diffraction and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. It was observed that the introduction of nitrogen in CuO improves the photovoltaic properties, such as the open-circuit voltage, short circuit current, and the photocurrent of the p-CuO-n-Si heterojunction. Key words: Cupric oxide, photovoltaics, heterojunction, nitrogen plasma
INTRODUCTION Because of a suitable band gap and p-type conductivity, copper oxides play a significant role in renewable energy and hole transport layers.1–5 Copper (Cu) can form one of the three types of oxides, namely: cuprous oxide (Cu2O; cuprite), cupric oxide (CuO; tenorite), and Cu4O3 (paramelaconite).6 Among these, cuprous oxide has been extensively studied because of its nontoxicity and abundant availability, and has been used in fabricating industrial semiconductor rectifiers.7 Since Cu2O has a direct band gap in the range of 1.6– 2.3 eV and has a relatively high absorption coefficient, it was also recognized early on as a promising photovoltaic (PV) semiconductor material.8 The doping difficulty and the lack of understanding of the doping mechanism in Cu2O have persisted in
(Received June 26, 2020; accepted October 24, 2020)
the development of photovoltaic technology.9 Thus, despite numerous techniques for Cu2O deposition by thermal oxidation,10 magnetron sputtering,11 and electrodeposition,12 the power conversion efficiency of Cu2O-based PV devices remained low.13 By introducing a buffer layer between Cu2O and ZnO resulted in a record efficiency of 4.08%.14 Although Cu2O PV devices did not become mainstream like silicon (Si) PV devices did previously, in recent years, there had been renewed interest in Cu2O in the con
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