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.