A strategy to boost the effectiveness of solar cells based upon thin-film bifacial Cu( In, Ga) Se2.

• To tackle international warming, designers have actually been trying to create increasingly innovative technologies that can generate as well as keep electric energy more sustainably. One of the most renowned among these technologies are solar cells, gadgets based on photovoltaic or pv products that can convert solar radiation into electricity.

One product that has actually recently drawn in considerable interest for the advancement of solar cells is the absorber bifacial Cu( In, Ga) Se2, additionally referred to as CIGS. This product could be specifically encouraging for the development of thin-film photovoltaics, as a result of its notable thermo-chemical stability.

Regardless of their benefits, CIGS-based solar cells frequently exhibit unsuitable power conversion performances, particularly when evaluated outside laboratory settings. This greatly hinders their possible, preventing them from being generated and also applied on a large-scale.

Scientists at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science as well as Technology, National Tsing Hua University and also University of Cantabria have recently devised a strategy that can assist to boost the power conversion effectiveness of CIGS thin-film solar cells.

This strategy, presented in a paper released in Nature Energy, involves using a silver-assisted low-temperature process to stop the formation of GaOx at the interface in between the CIGS layer and a transparent-conducting-oxide, which is known to impair the cells' performance.

" We protected against the formation of GaOx by silver-promoted low-temperature growth of the CIGS layer," Shih-Chi Yang as well as his colleagues wrote in their paper. "This process likewise led to an enhancement in the absorber top quality, a steep Ga gradient near the back interface and minimized the absorption of the transparent carrying out oxide.".

Basically, the researchers included a small amount of silver (4-- 5% AAC) to the CIGS absorbers, making use of a low-temperature deposition process. This process avoids the formation of GaOx at the CIGS/ITO interface, dealing with issues normally observed in CIGS-based solar cells.

To demonstrate the capacity of this silver-assisted low-temperature process, the researchers utilized it to create a collection of cells, and then assessed their performance in an experimental setting. These preliminary examinations produced extremely appealing outcomes, as their strategy appeared to make it possible for especially high power conversion effectiveness, which were on the whole above those of the various other formerly created CIGS cells that they were compared to.

" We additionally report a licensed bifacial solar cell on a glass substrate with effectiveness of 19.77% as well as 10.89% under front and back illumination, specifically," Yang as well as his colleagues wrote in their paper. "We also made bifacial solar cells directly on flexible substrates. Lastly, we prepared bifacial perovskite/CIGS tandem solar cells in a four-terminal arrangement, achieving a power generation density of 28.0 mW cm-2 under 1 sun and 30% albedo illumination.".

In the future, the new strategy developed by this team of scientists can lead the way towards the commercialization and also prevalent implementation of CIGS solar cells. In addition, their work can influence other teams to develop similar techniques for enhancing the performance of thin-film photovoltaics.