I’m doing a CIGS process and my last layer is a TCO. Do you have any suggestions for controlling the temperature of my TCO process to avoid degrading the active layer underneath it?
Absolutely! Thermal budgeting is a pressing issue for many manufacturing applications today. A little background for our readers: most PV manufacturing processes deposit the TCO layer first, before any other layers. However, for CIGS (and some thin-film Si) solar cells, the TCO is the last to go down. Unlike metal layers, which can be deposited with cold processes because their electrical conductivity is relatively unaffected by temperature, the conductivity of TCOs is highly affected by heat. To produce sufficient electrical conductivity, conventional TCO processes are performed at high temperatures. The problem is that for CIGS processes, which deposit the TCO last, this may exceed the thermal budget of all preceding layers. Excessive temperature can cause diffusion of the dopant within the active layers underneath the TCO, resulting in significant PV performance degradation. Further, if the substrate is temperature-sensitive, it can actually melt under the temperatures of convention
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