The growth in distribution applications defines a new era for photovoltaics. Envisioned to be deployed widely in, for example, smart cities and Internet of Things, "self-powered" distributed applications will be required to harvest energy from surrounding energy sources. Thin film photovoltaics devices fabricated from the kesterite absorber Cu2ZnSn(SxSe1-x)4 (CZTSSe) combine high efficiency, low-cost and non-toxic materials, providing an attractive energy harvesting solution for the vast number of distributed applications in healthcare, transportation, construction, aerospace and consumer devices. Kesterite solar cells have the added benefit of solution-based fabrication via nanoparticle inks (Y. Qu, et al,. Prog. Photovolt. 2016) which is compatible with high volume and high value manufacturing.
The ability to manufacture high efficiency CZTSSe thin film solar cells depends on achieving sufficiently high open circuit voltage. In this project, we aim to fabricate high performance CZTSSe solar cells by engineering the interface at the back contact.