Al Concentration Effect on ZnO Based Thin Films: For Photovoltaic Applications

In this work, we prepared aluminum-doped (Al) zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films using the sol-gel method, glass substrates have been used with zinc acetate as cations source and 2-methoxiethanol as solvent. The obtained experimental results show that the ZnO deposited films are relatively uniform. Optical measurements demonstrate that the deposited ZnO layers have a band gap of 3.26 eV which is close to that of the monocrystalline ZnO, about 3.3 eV. It was found that the roughness decreases by increasing the dopants concentration. Whatever the used substrate, transmission was observed between 75% and 99% for films deposited on ZnO:Al. Robust solar cells can be performed using from this study.