Topic: Cu(InGa)Se₂ Thin Film Solar Cell and Beyond

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Xudong Xiao,

　　　　  The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology.

Time: 14:00, (Friday) Aug. 19, 2011

Venue: Room 457, Lee Hsun building

Welcome to attend!

While many thin film solar cells have considerably lower efficiency than crystalline silicon solar cells, the conversion efficiency of Cu(InGa)Se2 (CIGS) solar cell is comparable to that of polycrystalline silicon solar cell, reaching 20.3% in lab. CIGS solar cell can be fabricated by depositing multilayer of thin film materials in a total thickness of several microns on low-cost substrates such as glass, plastic and metal foil and thus leads to a total fabrication cost of about &frac12 of crystalline silicon solar cells. It is estimated by NREL that CIGS will be the most cost competitive solar cell when mass production technology becomes mature and widely adopted.

As the most efficient thin-film solar cell, the commercialization potential of CIGS-based solar cell has attracted intensive interest both from research groups and commercial companies, mostly in USA, Germany and Japan. However, one also needs to be alerted by its challenges on the future cost of raw materials, in particular for Indium. Possible routes to replace In in such chalcopyrite semiconductors have been proposed and attempts towards this direction have been made experimentally. In my talk, I will present the current status of CIGS solar cell together with its structures and fabrication techniques. Afterwards, I will describe the potential candidates to cope with the limited In reserves. They include normal single junction CZTS solar cell and intermediate band solar cell based on chalcopyrite materials.