Sputtered AZO on <111>-oriented Cu2O photovoltaic device with improved performance

Electrodeposited Cu2O/AZO photovoltaic (PV) device are promising low-cost solar cell. Both layer of Cu2O and AZO heterojunction architectures are studied as a function of AZO target-Cu2O substrate distance during sputtering process to mitigate the damage at the interface. The Cu2O/AZO PV device has been constructed by electrodeposition of a <111>-p-Cu2O layer on an Au (111)/Si wafer substrate followed by stacking the AZO layer using a sputtering technique. The Cu2O/AZO PV device showed a photovoltaic performance under AM1.5 illumination, and the performance changed depending on the target-substrate distance. It is shown that an increase in target-substrate distance during stacking the AZO layer by sputtering mitigated the damage at the Cu2O/AZO interface. As a result, we were able to improve the Voc and power conversion efficiency from 0.16 V and 0.46 % to 0.30 V and 0.64%, respectively.