Impact of thiourea concentration on the properties of sol–gel derived Zn(O,S) thin films and Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 solar cells

A novel approach based on sol–gel spin coating method to deposit Zn(O,S) thin film using thiourea(TU) as a sulfur source replacing CdS as buffer layer was developed and the influence of TU concentration on the properties of Zn(O,S) thin films and Cu(In,Ga)Se2(CIGS) solar cells were investigated in this paper. It was found by X-ray diffraction and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy that sol–gel derived Zn(O,S) thin films were amorphous and composed of ZnS, ZnO as well as Zn(OH)2. The variation of the optical band gap as a function of the S/(S+O) ratio was determined by energy-dispersive spectroscopy and UV-VIS-NIR. The results indicated that the minimum value for band gap of approximate 3.72 eV was obtained when the S/(S+O) = 0.44. Efficiency of up to 7.28% was achieved for a CIGS solar cell with Zn(O,S) buffer layer from 0.2M TU, which was attributed to the optimized conduction band offset (CBO) of +0.45 eV at the CIGS/Zn(O,S) interface.