Chalcogenide glass-ceramic with self-organized heterojunctions: application to photovoltaic solar cells

Abstract

In this work, we present for the first time the concept of chalcogenide glass-ceramic for photovoltaic applications with the GeSe ₂–Sb ₂Se ₃–CuI system. It has been demonstrated that thin films, deposited with the sputtering technique, are amorphous and can be crystallized with appropriate heat treatment. The thin film glass-ceramic behaves as a p-type semiconductor, even if it contains p-type Cu ₂GeSe ₃ and n-type Sb ₂Se ₃. The conductivity of Sb ₂Se ₃ has been greatly improved by appropriate iodine doping. The first photovoltaic solar cells based on the association of iodine-doped Sb ₂Se ₃ and the glass-ceramic thin films give a short-circuit current density J _SC of 10 mA/cm ² and an open-circuit voltage V _OC of 255 mV, with a power conversion efficiency of about 0.9%.