Copper variation in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells with indium sulphide buffer layer

Abstract In the manufacturing of Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 (CIGS) thin film solar cells the application of a buffer layer on top of the absorber is essential to obtain high efficiency devices. Regarding the roll-to-roll production of CIGS cells and modules a vacuum deposition process for the buffer is preferable to the conventional cadmium sulphide buffer deposited in a chemical bath. Promising results have already been achieved for the deposition of indium sulphide buffer by different vacuum techniques. The solar device performance is very sensitive to the conditions at the absorber-buffer heterojunction. In view of optimization we investigated the influence of the Cu content in the absorber on the current–voltage characteristics. In this work the integral copper content was varied between 19 and 23 at.% in CIGS on glass substrates. An improvement of the cell performance by enhanced open circuit voltage was observed for a reduction to ~ 21 at.% when thermally evaporated indium sulphide was applied as the buffer layer. The influence of stoichiometry deviations on the transport mechanism and secondary barriers in the device was studied using detailed dark and light current–voltage analysis and admittance spectroscopy and compared to the reference CdS-buffered cells. We conclude that the composition of the absorber in the interface region affects current transport in In x S y -buffered and CdS-buffered cells in different ways hence optimal Cu content in those two types of devices is different.