Investigating the effect of La doped CuO thin film as absorber material for solar cell application

Naveena, D. and Dhanabal, R. and Chandra Bose, A. (2022) Investigating the effect of La doped CuO thin film as absorber material for solar cell application. Optical Materials, 127. pp. 1-9. ISSN 0925-3467

Text
Optical_Materials.pdf - Published Version
Restricted to Registered users only
Download (6MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

The main objective of the study is to analyze the properties of undoped and La doped CuO (LCO) thin films as potential absorber for photovoltaic application. Chemical spray pyrolysis technique has been used to prepare the undoped and LCO thin films with different wt% (2, 4, 6, 8 and 10). All the films exhibit polycrystalline monoclinic crystal structure and no peaks related to impurity phases are identified. The average crystallite size of the La doped films is decreased from 19.51 nm to 8.73 nm. From UV spectra, the La doped films exhibit high optical absorption and their band gap value decreases from 1.62 eV to 1.49 eV upto 6 wt%. The PL intensity of the CuO films decreases upto 6 wt% of La and then increases. The SEM image of La doped films show the uniform, homogenous and compact surface with decrease in grain size. From Hall measurement, the 6 wt% of LCO shows higher carrier concentration (4.68 × 1019 cm−3) and lower electrical resistivity (1.33 Ω cm). All the films exhibit ohmic behavior and 6 wt% of La shows higher dark current (1.41 mA) and photoresponse of 1.5 mA. The photovoltaic performance of undoped and 6 wt% of LCO solar cells is evaluated, and their power conversion efficiencies are 0.34% and 1.36% respectively. The above mentioned results determined that 6 wt% of LCO thin films can be used as an effective absorber material for solid state p-n junction solar cell. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.

[error in script]

IITH Creators: