Engineering Nanoscale Materials for Solar Cells
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i Engineering Nanoscale Materials for Solar Cells Yahuitl Osorio Mayon A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University © Copyright by Yahuitl Osorio Mayon 2017 All rights reserved ii iii To my parents iv v Declaration The work in this thesis is my own, except where otherwise stated. I certify that this thesis does not incorporate, without acknowledgement, any material previously submitted for a degree or a diploma in any university, and that, to the best of my knowledge it does not contain any material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text. The work in this thesis is my own, except for the contributions made by others as described in the Acknowledgements. Yahuitl Osorio Mayon vi vii Acknowledgements I am forever grateful for the advice, guidance, and support of my supervisor Dr. Kylie R. Catchpole, for always making herself available for much valuable discussions. I am also grateful to Dr. Thomas P. White for always providing much useful advice. I am also grateful to Dr. Antonio Tricoli for his support and guidance with the flame aerosol system. I also want to thank Professor Barry Luther-Davis and Dr. Zhiyong Yang for generously facilitating and providing the antimony trisulphide pellets used for the research in Chapter 4. I also want to thank Dr. Zhiyong Yang for our discussions of chalcogenide glasses which were of great benefit. I am also grateful to Sukanta Debbarma for assisting with the thermal evaporation of the antimony trisulphide material that was used in Chapter 4. I am grateful to Guanyu Liu, Noushin Nasiri and Renheng Bo for their assistance and instruction to fabricate the flame-made porous layers used in Chapters 5, 6 and 7 respectively. I am grateful to The Duong for assisting with the fabrication of the methyl ammonium lead iodide and spiro-OMeTAD that was used in Chapters 6 and 7. I also want to thank all the of following academics, post-docs, PhD students, and research and technical officers whom also have enriched and made my research experience much more extraordinary than I could have ever imagined: Professor Andrew Blakers, Professor Andres Cuevas, Professor Hoe Tan, Professor Wojciech Lipinski, Dr. Mark Ridgway, Dr. Daniel Macdonald, Dr. Klaus Weber, Dr. Evan Franklin, Dr. Andreas Fell, Dr. Sachin Surve, Dr. Andrew Thomson, Dr. Marco Ernst, Dr. Niraj Lal, Dr. Er-Chien Wang, Dr. Fiona Beck, Dr. Angelika Basch, Dr. Arnold McKinley, Dr. Nicholas Grant, Dr. Elizabeth Thomsen, Dr. Daniel Walter, Dr. Jose Zapata, Dr. Teck Kong, Dr. Tom Ratcliff, Dr. Pheng Phang, Dr. Hang Sio, Dr. Chog Barugkin, Dr. Jelena Muric-Nusic, Dr. Beatriz Velasco, Dr. Xinyu Zhang, Dr. Wensheng Liang, Dr. Siew Lim, Dr. Anyao Liu, Dr. Kean Cheng, Dr. Jie Cui, viii Dr. Fiacre Rougieux, Dr. Heping Chen, Dr. Mykalo Lysevych, Dr. Sudha Mokkapati, Dr. Naheem Shahid, Dr. Kaushal Vora, Dr. Li Li, Dr. Melanie Rug, Dr. Frank Brink, Dr. Hua Chen, Ingrid Haedrich, Hieu Nguyen, James Bullock, William Wong, Jin Jin Cong, Di Yan, Shakir Rahman, Erin Crisp, Kate Brooker, Jeremy Smith, Tom Allen, Mohsen Goodarzi, Young Han, Xiao Fu, Ryan Sun, Yiliang Wu, Dale Grant, Christoper Jones, Teng Kho, Rasin Ahmed Tasnim, Bruce Condon, James Cotsell, Nina De Caritat, Christian Samundsett, Maureen Brauers, Mark Saunders, Josephine McKeon, Judy Harvey and Greg Burgess. All of you have contributed one way or another to the development of my research work and experience, for which I am very fortunate and grateful. ix ABSTRACT The purpose of this work is to contribute towards developing high-efficiency low-cost solar cells that have the potential to decrease the cost of solar energy. The focus is on novel device structures that aim to minimise losses and/or allow high-throughput fabrication for antimony sulphide (Sb2S3) and the perovskite methyl ammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3). The first part of the research is on planar Sb2S3 solar cells, and led to a twofold efficiency increase through the use of a planar Sb2S3 layer with a high proportion of c-axis aligned crystal planes perpendicular to the substrate. The transport of photo-generated carriers along the c-axis aligned Sb2S3 crystal planes has a lower recombination rate and longer effective diffusion lengths than for other crystal planes. A completely planar top Sb2S3 surface on a textured (non-planar) substrate was fabricated from a non-planar sulphur-rich Sb2S3 layer. The planar top surface of the Sb2S3 layer facilitates the subsequent deposition of compact, thin and uniform layers of other materials which contributes to improve the photovoltaic performance. The second part of the research focused on fabrication of porous TiO2 layers via a flame aerosol system, applied to both Sb2S3 and MAPbI3 solar cells. The flame aerosol system is a high-throughput deposition method that could rapidly coat a large area substrate as part of a continuous industrial production line. The mechanical stability of flame-made porous TiO2 layers is crucial to withstanding the subsequent material depositions processes via solution methods. Different annealing methods were used to increase the mechanical stability of flame-made porous layers for solar cells. The porosity of the flame-made porous TiO2 layers was easily adjusted over a wide range: from 97% to 35%. A porous TiO2 layer with a high porosity could improve the solar cell efficiency by increasing the collection efficiency through better infiltration of the other solar cell materials in the porous layer. The optimised MAPbI3 solar cell with flame-made porous TiO2 layer had a comparable efficiency to the control MAPbI3 solar cell with the standard spin- coated porous TiO2 layer, demonstrating its potential with scope for further improvement. x The efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells could be also improved by using SnO2 instead of TiO2 as the former has better electronic and photo-catalytic properties than the latter. For this reason, MAPbI3 perovskite solar cells with a flame-made porous SnO2 layer were also investigated. The MAPbI3 solar cell with a flame-made porous SnO2 had promising efficiencies even though the main limitation for a higher efficiency was the use of a compact TiO2 layer with the porous SnO2 layer. The work contained in this thesis provides pathways to reduce recombination losses and fabricate a high-throughput low-cost porous structure for Sb2S3 and MAPbI3 solar cells. The findings from this work could also be implemented with other materials; particularly with mixed-perovskites and sulphur-based materials. 1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1 Climate Change .......................................................................................................................... 1 Solar Energy ............................................................................................................................... 1 SOLAR CELLS .......................................................................................................................................... 3 Current Status ............................................................................................................................ 3 Limitations ................................................................................................................................. 5 Potential Solutions ..................................................................................................................... 6 THESIS RESEARCH .................................................................................................................................... 8 Thesis Contributions .................................................................................................................. 8 Thesis Layout.............................................................................................................................. 9 2. Background Knowledge ................................................................................... 11 2.1 FUNDAMENTALS OF SOLAR CELLS ............................................................................................... 11 Light Absorption ....................................................................................................................... 11 Photovoltaic Effect ................................................................................................................... 13 Utopic Efficiency Limits ............................................................................................................ 14 Detailed Balance Efficiency Limit ............................................................................................. 15 Solar Cell Structure .................................................................................................................. 15 Solar Cell Performance Parameters ......................................................................................... 16 Efficiency Losses ....................................................................................................................... 18 Remarks ................................................................................................................................... 19 2.2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................. 21 2.2.1 Dye-Sensitised Solar Cells ...............................................................................................