Electrical and optical study of Cu(In, Ga)Se2 co-evaporated thin films

Co-evaporation technique from three sources was used to prepare Cu(In, Ga)Se2 polycrystalline thin films for photovoltaic conversion. Their conductivity was studied in the range 20–300 K. The grain boundary scattering mechanism is mainly responsible for the diffusion process in the latter materials. In the low temperature region, we interpret the data in terms of Mott law and the analysis is very consistent with the variable range hopping. However, thermoionic emission is predominant at high temperatures. When the conductivity deviates from the classical grain boundary conduction models, inhomogeneity is then considered and parameters such as the standard deviation and the mean potential barrier height are derived. Transmittance measurements yielded band gap values of 1.07 and 1.64 eV for CuInSe2 and CuGaSe2, respectively.