New method to measure whole-wavelength transmittance of TCO substrates for thin-film silicon solar cells

•A new evaluation method of transmittance of TCO with high haze is proposed.•Good correlation with the transmittance and EQE of uc-Si solar cells was confirmed.•This new method is useful for TCO substrates with very high haze.

High transmittance of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) substrates is one of the most important factors for achieving high efficiency in thin-film silicon solar cells. Immersion (IM) method with CH2I2 liquid is widely used for the evaluation of optical properties (transmittance, reflectance and absorption) for TCO substrates with textured surface in order to reduce the scattering at the TCO surface. However, in order to measure transmittance accurately, three problems have been found. (1) CH2I2 liquid itself absorbs the light in short wavelength region. (2) The transmittance around the absorption edge of CH2I2 liquids is very sensitive to its amount. (3) Scattering cannot be suppressed when the scattering surfaces are more than 2 surfaces (for example, TCO on reactive ion etching (RIE) processed glass). To overcome these problems, we proposed a new setup to measure optical properties of TCO substrates by holding the samples inside the integral sphere. As the results, we have confirmed that their absorption in all wavelength could be measured accurately and the transmittance measured by the new method was well consistent with the external quantum efficiency (EQE) of the fabricated cell while the transmittance measured with conventional IM method showed differently. Therefore, this new method could be a useful tool to evaluate TCO substrates for thin-film silicon solar cells.