Combinatorial sputtering of Ga-doped (Zn,Mg)O for contact applications in solar cells.pdfVIP

Solar Energy Materials Solar Cells 159 (2017) 219–226 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Solar Energy Materials Solar Cells journal homepage: /locate/solmat Combinatorial sputtering of Ga-doped (Zn,Mg)O for contact applications in solar cells Pravakar P. Rajbhandari a,b,n, André Bikowski a, John D. Perkins a, Tara P. Dhakal b,nn, Andriy Zakutayev a,nn a Materials Science Center, Materials and Chemical Sciences Directorate, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA b Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Center for Autonomous Solar Power Laboratory, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13850, USA article info Article history: Received 6 May 2016 Received in revised form 30 August 2016 Accepted 3 September 2016 Available online 20 September 2016 Keywords: Transparent conductive oxide Electron af?nity High-throughput experiments Electrical contact Photovoltaic Photo-electrochemical abstract Development of tunable contact materials based on environmentally friendly chemical elements using scalable deposition approaches is necessary for existing and emerging solar energy conversion technologies. In this paper, the properties of ZnO alloyed with magnesium (Mg), and doped with gallium (Ga) are studied using combinatorial thin ?lm experiments. As a result of these studies, the optical band gap of the sputtered Zn1àxMgxO thin ?lms was determined to vary from 3.3 to 3.6 eV for a compositional spread of Mg content in the 0.04 oxo 0.17 range. Depending on whether or not Ga dopants were added, the electron concentrations were on the order of 1017 cmà3 or 1020 cmà3, respectively. Based on these results and on the Kelvin Probe work function measurements, a band diagram was derived using basic semiconductor physics equations. The quantitative determination of how the energy levels of Ga-doped (Zn, Mg)O thin ?lms change as a function of Mg composition presented here, will facilitate their use as optimized contact layers f