Assessing local voltage in CIGS solar cells by nanoscale resolved Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy and sub-micron photoluminescence

Author

Tennyson, Elizabeth M. ; Garrett, Joseph L. ; Chen Gong ; Frantz, J.A. ; Myers, J.D. ; Bekele, R.Y. ; Sanghera, J.S. ; Munday, Jeremy N. ; Leite, Marina S.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mater. Sci. & Eng., Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

8-13 June 2014

Abstract

Here we use nanoscale resolved Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy (KPFM) to locally probe the open circuit voltage in CIGS thin film solar cells. Illumination-dependent KPFM shows that the grain boundaries and grain cores present variations in surface photovoltage, as a consequence of the local variation of the open circuit voltage. Additionally, room temperature sub-micron photoluminescence (PL) scans were used to map the recombination centers in the polycrystalline CIGS films.

Keywords

copper compounds; gallium compounds; indium compounds; photoluminescence; solar cells; thin films; CIGS; PL scans; grain boundaries; grain cores; illumination-dependent KPFM; local voltage assessment; nanoscale resolved Kelvin probe force microscopy; open circuit voltage; polycrystalline films; recombination centers; submicron photoluminescence; surface photovoltage; thin film solar cells; Force; Indexes; Microscopy; CIGS; scanning probe microscopy; solar energy; thin-film;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC), 2014 IEEE 40th

Conference_Location

Denver, CO

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2014.6925014

Filename

6925014