Large band bending at SnS interface opens door for extremely effective thin-film solar cells

• Tin sulfide (SnS) solar cells have actually revealed immense promise in the thrill to establish more eco-friendly thin-film solar cells. Yet for years SnS solar cells have struggled to achieve a high conversion effectiveness. To overcome this, a SnS interface showing large band bending was essential, something a research group has actually recently achieved.

With the press in the direction of carbon nonpartisanship expanding, and as a troubling pattern of increasing temperatures and all-natural disasters triggered by international warming continues, solar cells will play an essential role in the world's transition to renewable resource.

Currently, a research team has laid the course for achieving higher open-circuit voltage in tin sulfide (SnS) solar cells, hence recognizing their latent possibility as a thin-film solar material.

Thin-film solar cells, which comprise substance semiconductors with strong light absorption, need less basic materials, making them lighter and also more affordable to produce.

SnS is one such thin-film solar cell product with environmentally friendly credentials, considering that it contains no rare or toxic elements. Yet, in recent times, researchers have actually started to question this premise since, regardless of greater than 20 years of research right into them, their conversion effectiveness had gotten to a simple 5% as a result of a reduced open-circuit voltage.

The team, which was led by Assistant Professor Issei Suzuki, from Tohoku University's Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, efficiently showed a SnS interface showing big band bending-- something needed for getting a greater open-circuit voltage.

" We utilized photoelectron spectroscopy to examine the electronic structure of the interface where molybdenum oxide was transferred on a SnS single crystal," said Suzuki. "We confirmed that the interface state achieved a high open-circuit voltage."

This is not Suzuki's initial breakthrough in SnS thin-film solar cells either. In December 2021, he led an additional team that generated the world's first n-type SnS thin film. This made it possible for homojunctions to be formed in thin films.

For the existing research, the team additionally recommended a technique for fabricating interfaces ideal for SnS thin-film solar cells, including lowering the sulfur deficiency in the SnS thin films as well as employing a homojunction framework in their n-type and p-type layers.

"In the future, we want to fabricate homojunction solar cells with high conversion efficiency," included Suzuki.

Details of the group's research were released in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C.