Sprayed ZnO: Al thin film as abundant TCO layer for nc-Si:H/C-Si
solar cell application
Fawzy A. Mahmoud
*1,2
, Wafaa Magdy
1,2
1-Solid State Physics Dept., National Research Center, P.O. 12311, Dokki, Giza, Egypt
2-Solar cell lab., Center of Excellence for Advanced Sciences, National Research Centre, P.O.12311,
Dokki, Giza, Egypt
Email:
Transparent conducting aluminum doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films were prepared on glass
substrates by spray pyrolysis technique. Al and Zn are abundance in natural and non toxic
that make AZO an attractive material when compared with indium tin oxide (ITO) as TCO
layer in solar cell applications. The Al concentration in the starting solution was 2 wt % to
produce AZO films at different substrate temperatures. XRD revealed that all AZO thin films
were polycrystalline with hexagonal structure and exhibited (002) preferential orientation
with crystallites in nano-scale. Sprayed AZO film with minimum electrical resistivity 1.16
×10
-3
Ω.cm, carrier concentration 2.19×10
20
cm-3 , mobility 27.43 cm
2
/Vs and high
transmittance up to 90 % in visible range were obtained at substrate temperature 500
o
C. The
optimum AZO layer was used to construct AZO/n-type nc-Si:H/ p-type C-Si wafer/Ag. The
prepared solar cell show not bad parameters, compared with low cost technique that used for
TCO layer, where V
oc
= 0.252 V, I
sc
= 0.0124 A/cm
2
, FF= 0.5966 and η = 1.8643%
Keywords:
Spray pyrolysis; TCO; AZO; Electrical; structural and optical properties, Hetrojunction solar cell
PS1 18
-174-
