Defect Engineering in Earth-Abundant Cu2ZnSnSe4 Absorber Using Efficient Alkali Doping for Flexible and Tandem Solar Cell Applications

To demonstrate flexible and tandem device applications, a low-temperature Cu2ZnSnSe4 (CZTSe) deposition process, combined with efficient alkali doping, was developed. First, high-quality CZTSe films were grown at 480 degrees C by a single co-evaporation, which is applicable to polyimide (PI) substrate. Because of the alkali-free substrate, Na and K alkali doping were systematically studied and optimized to precisely control the alkali distribution in CZTSe. The bulk defect density was significantly reduced by suppression of deep acceptor states after the (NaF + KF) PDTs. Through the low-temperature deposition with (NaF + KF) PDTs, the CZTSe device on glass yields the best efficiency of 8.1% with an improved V-OC deficit of 646 mV. The developed deposition technologies have been applied to PI. For the first time, we report the highest efficiency of 6.92% for flexible CZTSe solar cells on PI. Additionally, CZTSe devices were utilized as bottom cells to fabricate four-terminal CZTSe/perovskite tandem cells because of a low bandgap of CZTSe (similar to 1.0 eV) so that the tandem cell yielded an efficiency of 20%. The obtained results show that CZTSe solar cells prepared by a low-temperature process with in-situ alkali doping can be utilized for flexible thin-film solar cells as well as tandem device applications.