Chemical bath deposition of Zn(O,S) and CdS buffers: Influence of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 grain orientation

The present contribution discusses buffer growth by chemical bath deposition (CBD) on polycrystalline Cu(In,Ga)Se-2 (CIGS) films deposited by in-line co-evaporation with an integral [Ga]/([Ga]+[In]) ratio of 0.3. We report a correlation of the coverage of CBD Zn(O,S) and CdS films with the CIGS grain orientation as determined by electron backscatter diffraction. < 221 >-oriented CIGS grains are sparsely covered with the CBD films, whereas on < 100 >/< 001 >- and < 110 >/< 201 >-oriented CIGS grains, we found very dense coverage of the CIGS surfaces. This result may be explained by lower energies of CIGS {112} surfaces compared with those of {100}/{001} and {110}/{102}. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4788717]