Experimental investigation and optimization of process parameters on the chemical bath deposited zinc sulphide thin films for solar cell applications

Abstract

Numerous recent researches on the fabrication of solar cells have been aimed to lower the fabrication cost in order to reduce the cost of energy produced. The fabrication cost can be reduced by using higher efficient materials in the fabrication of solar cells. Higher efficient materials can be obtained by reducing the size of the materials in Nanoscale and applying thin film technology. These materials shall be easily prepared, inexpensive and possess stable properties over long period of operation. The higher cost of fabrication and difficulty to obtain single crystal semiconductors created interest towards the development of polycrystalline semiconductors, involving a wide range of compounds for the usage in solar cell application. In this work, ZnS, an n-type II-VI compound is considered, with a varied band gap from 3.5 eV to 3.7 eV. It is a promising material for usage in window layers of solar cells and for coatings sensitive to UV light. There are a number of techniques available to prepare metal sulphide thin films. The Chemical Bath Deposition (CBD), a prevalent low temperature aqueous method, is considered to be a useful technique for the preparation of thin films due to its good quality output for photovoltaic applications. newline