Electrodeposition of Mg doped ZnO thin film for the window layer of CIGS solar cell

Mg doped ZnO (ZMO) film with the tunable bandgap can adjust the conduction band offset of the window/chalcopyrite absorber heterointerface to positive to reduce the interface recombination and resulting in an increasement of chalcopyrite based solar cell efficiency. A systematic study of the effect of the electrodeposition potential on morphology, crystalline structure, crystallographic orientation and optical properties of ZMO films was investigated. It is interestingly found that the prepared doped samples undergo a significant morphological change induced by the deposition potential. With negative shift of deposition potential, an obvious morphology evolution from nanorod structrue to particle covered films was observed. A possible growth mechanism for explaining the morphological change is proposed and briefly discussed. The combined optical techniques including absorption, transmission and photoluminescence were used to study the obtained ZMO films deposited at different potential. The sample deposited at −0.9 V with the hexagonal nanorods morphology shows the highest optical transparency of 92%. The photoluminescence spectra reveal that the crystallization of the hexagonal nanorod ZMO thin film deoposited at −0.9 V is much better than the particles covered ZMO thin film. Combining the structural and optical properties analysis, the obtained normal hexagonal nanorod ZMO thin film could potentially be useful in nanostructured chalcopyrite solar cells to improve the device performance.