High haze Ga and Zr co-doped zinc oxide transparent electrodes for photovoltaic applications

Creating textured front electrodes to improve optical path length is promising to enhance the power conversion efficiency of solar cells. Deposition of transparent conductive oxides with textured surfaces usually requires additional processing steps, such as etching and coating nanoparticles. However, this makes the process complicated and inefficient. We demonstrate a one-step fabrication process to deposit high haze gallium and zirconium co-doped zinc oxides (GZO:Zr) prepared by atmospheric pressure plasma jets. GZO:Zr (2 at%) films achieve a low resistivity (7.88 x 10(-4) Omega cm), a high haze (34.8%), and a great FoM (8.22 x 10(-3) Omega(-1)). The haze factor increases from 7.19% to 34.8% (+384%) when 2% Zr is doped into GZO films. Such an enhancement of haze is attributed to the increased surface roughness and deterioration of crystallinity. AFM results show that roughness increases from 18.4 to 122 nm after 2% Zr is doped. SEM images show that spherical particles appeared on the film surface when Zr was doped into GZO films. Unlike conventional methods, our method produces hazy transparent electrodes in one step without changing any operational parameters and is suitable for industrial-scale mass production. Our findings pave the way for new applications of co-doping in transparent conductive oxides. (C) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates a one-step fabrication process to deposit high haze gallium and zirconium co-doped zinc oxides (GZO:Zr) using atmospheric pressure plasma jets. The co-doped films exhibit low resistivity, high haze, and a great figure of merit. The enhancement in haze is attributed to increased surface roughness and deterioration of crystallinity. The method offers a simple and efficient approach to produce hazy transparent electrodes for industrial-scale mass production.