Identification and development of new metal-oxide thin-film photovoltaic absorber materials

Although the cost of photovoltaics has dropped remarkably over the last few years, increasing the rate of uptake remains a priority. Low-cost thin-film absorber materials which can be produced using wide-area deposition processes have the potential to dramatically reduce the cost of photovoltaics even further. Development of effective oxide-based absorbers could enable the facile construction of robust, stable and very low-cost devices which could be deposited using existing industrially applicable wide-area deposition techniques. Significant research effort has gone into the development of p-type metal oxides, both as absorbers and as transparent contacts, but primarily due to the electronic properties typical of most metal oxides minimal success has so far been achieved. This project therefore aims to identify and optimise n-type oxide absorber materials, with an additional focus on Earth-abundance of the constituent elements. Materials development will be carried out using a unique combinatorial sputter deposition process allowing for rapid exploration of the compositional space and providing an effective means for easy identification of optimum materials parameters.