• Nuckowski, Paweł M.
• Panek, Piotr
• Wozny, Janusz
• Starowicz, Zbigniew
• Musztyfaga-Staszuk, Małgorzata
• Gawlinska-Necek, Katarzyna

Abstract

<jats:p>In this report, the morphological, optical, electrical, and photovoltaic properties of copper oxide and calcium-doped copper oxide thin films produced via the spray coating method were studied. The thermal post treatment at 300 °C in an inert atmosphere allowed us to obtain a single phase of Cu2O with 21 Ωcm of resistivity (ρ). In this study, 1 wt%, 2 wt%, 3 wt%, 4 wt%, 5 wt%, and 10 wt% Ca admixtures with copper oxide were investigated. The determined optimal calcium dopant concentration was 4 wt%. XRD analysis was used to reveal the chemical composition of the produced layers. It was found that a calcium dopant does not change the layer composition but improves its electrical parameters. Based on UV-Vis spectra, the band gap energy and Urbach energy were calculated. The morphology of produced thin films was described as smooth and nanocrystalline, corresponding to a grain size calculated based on the Scherrer equation. Finally, it was shown that the developed protocol of low-resistivity copper oxide deposition via the spray coating technique can be successfully implemented in heterojunction solar cell production. The I–V parameters of Ag/n-type CzSi/REF:CuOx and 4Ca:CuOx/Carbon were collected, and the achieved efficiency was 2.38%.</jats:p>

Topics

• Deposition
• Carbon
• grain
• resistivity
• grain size
• phase
• x-ray diffraction
• thin film
• chemical composition
• copper
• Calcium
• spray coating