Low-reflective transparent conducting films of indium oxide by vacuum evaporation and their application to amorphous silicon solar cells

Technical Report · Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1986

OSTI ID:6546644

Katsube, S; Aoyama, T; Hayashi, H; Okuda, K

Transparent conducting films of metaloxides essentially show high reflection over 10%, which often prevents them from being utilized as a transparent heater, an infrared reflector, etc., in optical devices. This report describes a vacuum-evaporating method of low-reflective transparent conducting films of indium oxide and their application to amorphous silicon solar cells as transparent electrodes. Indium-oxide films doped with 3 wt % tin-oxide were evaporated at an oxygen pressure of 0.0003 Torr on so slide-glass plates heated at a temperature of 400C. The film's average reflectance in the visible region decreased gradually with increasing deposition rate, and lowered down to a level of a bare substrate glass surface at a deposition rate of 7 A/s. Such low reflections of the films seemed to be due to optical inhomogeneities that occurred from rough grain structures in their upper layers. The similar reduced reflections appeared also on the front faces of amorphous silicon solar cells which use these inhomogenous indium-oxide films as transparent electrodes. As a result, the amorphous silicon solar cells with properly inhomogeneous indium-oxide film's electrodes exhibited fairly enhanced photovoltaic conversion efficiencies in comparison with that with homogeneous ones.

• Research Organization: Government Industrial Research Inst., Osaka, Ikeda (Japan)
• OSTI ID: 6546644
• Report Number(s): PB-87-151197/XAB
• Resource Relation: Other Information: Text in Japanese; Included in Bulletin of the Government Industrial Research Institute, Osaka, Vol. 37, No. 3, 191-198(Sep 1986)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
FILMS
VACUUM EVAPORATION
INDIUM OXIDES
SILICON SOLAR CELLS
ELECTRODES
CHALCOGENIDES
DIRECT ENERGY CONVERTERS
EQUIPMENT
EVAPORATION
INDIUM COMPOUNDS
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
PHOTOELECTRIC CELLS
PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS
SOLAR CELLS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
140501* - Solar Energy Conversion- Photovoltaic Conversion