Electrochemical deposition of Al-doped ZnO transparent conducting nanowire arrays for thin-film solar cell electrodes

This paper reports a facile electrochemical route fur growing Al-doped ZnO transparent conducting nanowire (NW) at on tluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) substrates. The effects of precursor concentration, Al/Zn ratio, and applied potential on the morphologies, electrical conducting, and optical transmittance properties are examined. The Al-doped ZnO NWs are well-aligned with the c-axis being perpendicular to the substrates. Moreover, the Al-doped ZnO NW arrays, which had been thermally treated at 420 degrees C in vacuum, exhibit good conductivity with the minimum sheet resistance of 162 and light scattering effect. This initiates a new method for growing large area doped ZnO transparent conducting films with light scattering at low cost, which is expected to be used for the transparent electrodes of thin-film solar cells. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved