Insights on the influence of surface roughness on photovoltaic properties of state of the art copper indium gallium diselenide thin films solar cells

The influence of Cu(In,Ga)Se ₂ (CIGSe) surface roughness on the photovoltaic parameters of state of the art devices is reported, highlighting the importance of the roughness of the as-grown CIGSe absorbers on solar cell efficiencies. As-grown CIGSe surface is progressively smoothed using a chemical etch, and characterized by SEM, AFM, XPS, μ-Raman spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction (XRD), and reflectivity. The decrease of roughness has no marked influence on crystal structure and surface composition of the absorber. The main effect is that the total reflectivity of the CIGSe surface increases with decreasing roughness. The samples are processed into solar cells and characterized by current-voltage measurements. While the open circuit voltage (V _oc) and fill factor remain constant, the short circuit current (J _sc) decreases markedly with decreasing roughness, resulting in a reduction of the solar cell efficiency from 14 down to 11, which exceeds the expected decrease from increased reflectivity. Quantum efficiency and reflectivity measurements on complete cells are performed to analyze those effects. The influence of surface roughness on the theorical effective space charge region and diffusion length is based on a simple theoretical model. This paper discusses the comparison of CIGSe solar cells with n-i-p structures.