Current Photovoltaic Research ISSN:2288-3274(Print) 2508-125X(Online)

Beside several advantages, the PV power generation as a clean energy source, is still below the supply level due to high power generation cost. Therefore, the interest in fabricating low-cost thin film solar cells is increasing continuously. Cu₂O, a low cost photovoltaic material, has a wide direct band gap of ~2.1 eV has along with the high theoretical energy conversion efficiency of about 20%. On the other hand, it has other benefits such as earth-abundance, low cost, non-toxic, high carrier mobility (100 cm²/Vs). In spite of these various advantages, the efficiency of Cu₂O based solar cells is still significantly lower than the theoretical limit as reported in several literatures. One of the reasons behind the low efficiency of Cu₂O solar cells can be the formation of CuO layer due to atmospheric surface oxidation of Cu₂O absorber layer. In this work, atomic layer deposition method was used to remove the CuO layer that formed on Cu₂O surface. First, Cu₂O absorber layer was deposited by electrodeposition. On top of it buffer (ZnO) and TCO (AZO) layers were deposited by atomic layer deposition and rf-magnetron sputtering respectively. We fabricated the cells with a change in the deposition temperature of buffer layer ranging between 80°C to 140°C. Finally, we compared the performance of fabricated solar cells, and studied the influence of buffer layer deposition temperature on Cu₂O based solar cells by J-V and XPS measurements.