The role of SnO2 high resistivity transparent layer deposited onto commercial conducting glass as front contact in superstrate configuration thin films solar cells technology: influence of the deposition technique

Abstract

The deposition of a high resistivity transparent (HRT) oxide between a transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and the window CdS has demonstrated the improvement of performance of CdS/CdTe solar cells, fabricated in the superstrate-configuration.  In this work the influence of the pneumatic spray pyrolysis (PSP) and magnetron sputtering techniques on the properties TCO/SnO2/CdS structure through the deposition of the intermediate SnO2 between the commercial conducting glass and CdS window is presented by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS), and contact resistance, calculated using transmission line method (TLM), in order to reduce the front contact resistance in devices with superstrate-configuration. The results of this work are applicable to other solar cells in the same configuration as the recent solar cells based on the compound Sb2Se3, where the use of this type of HRT has not been studied.