Title :
Performance of transparent conductors on flexible glass and plastic substrates for thin film photovoltaics
Author :
Burst, James M. ; Rance, W.L. ; Meysing, D.M. ; Wolden, Colin A. ; Metzger, Wyatt K. ; Garner, Sean M. ; Cimo, Patrick ; Barnes, Teresa M. ; Gessert, Timothy A. ; Reese, Matthew O.
Author_Institution :
NREL, Golden, CO, USA
Abstract :
High-performance transparent conductive indium-tin-oxide (ITO) films on flexible glass have been flextested to 25-50k bend cycles without breakage, and with ~0.1% change in sheet resistance. In contrast, commercial ITO/PET samples undergo ~50-100% increase in sheet resistance in the same test, indicating that such coatings/substrates may not be acceptable for use in some products or fabrication procedures. The flexible glass substrate enables high-temperature processing, which facilitates the high performance of the coatings. Measurements of the volume resistivity and water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) indicate that Corning® Willow® Glass is suitable as a PV substrate material without need for barrier coatings or glass lamination.
Keywords :
glass; solar cells; thin films; Corning willow glass; ITO; PET samples; PV substrate material; WVTR; fabrication procedures; flexible glass substrate; high-temperature processing; plastic substrates; sheet resistance; thin film photovoltaics; transparent conductive films; volume resistivity; water vapor transmission rate; Films; Glass; Indium tin oxide; Positron emission tomography; Resistance; Substrates; Temperature measurement; CdTe; PET; flexible glass; superstrate; transparent conductive oxides (TCOs);
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialist Conference (PVSC), 2014 IEEE 40th
Conference_Location :
Denver, CO
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.2014.6925223
