Thin film solar cells from sintered nanocrystals

Formation of semiconductor thin films from nanocrystal (NC) inks is emerging as a very important technology for thin film photovoltaics. It enables routes to low-cost solar cells via high-throughput and low-capital cost manufacturing techniques based on simple coating or printing methods. Most approaches can be categorized by whether the nanocrystals are to be left intact or are to be sintered into a polycrystalline film. The sintering approach has yielded much higher solar cell performance. Here, we focus on the sintered NC-ink route to yield conventional inorganic thin film solar cells (CdTe, CIGSe, CZTS, etc.) with the standard window/buffer/absorber layer architecture. We discuss the current state-of-the-art and give our opinion and perspective on NC nucleation and growth, NC synthesis methods, ligand exchange, ink-coating, ink-drying, NC sintering, and device fabrication relevant to these solar cells.