Junction formation of Cu₃BiS₃ investigated by Kelvin probe force microscopy and surface photovoltage measurements

• Fredy Mesa,
• William Chamorro,
• William Vallejo,
• Robert Baier,
• Thomas Dittrich,
• Alexander Grimm,
• Martha C. Lux-Steiner and
• Sascha Sadewasser

Beilstein J. Nanotechnol. 2012, 3, 277–284, doi:10.3762/bjnano.3.31

• in a combination of chemical bath deposition and a sputtering process [3][4]. The band gap of these Cu3BiS3 thin films was shown to be ~1.4 eV [3], which makes them an excellent candidate for application in solar cells. It was also shown that thin films prepared by a coevaporation process present

• photovoltaic active interface with a SPV of ~130 mV [7]. It is well known from the Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells that a buffer layer is required between the n-ZnO window and the p-type absorber layer to reach high efficiency values [8]. Traditionally, CdS deposited by chemical bath deposition (CBD) has been used as

• , such as chemical bath deposition, atomic layer deposition, ion layer gas reaction (ILGAR) deposition, evaporation, and spray deposition [9]. One interesting aspect of the above mentioned solar cell materials CdTe and Cu(In,Ga)Se2 is their high efficiency despite the abundance of grain boundaries (GBs