Substantial improvement of the photovoltaic characteristics of TiO2/CuInS2 interfaces by the use of recombination barrier coatings

Abstract The recent success of ultrathin insulator oxide coatings on mesoporous TiO 2 films (such as Al 2 O 3 and MgO) with regard to the efficiency of solid state dye-sensitized solar cells (Jap. J. Appl. Phys. 40 (2001) L732) has received substantial attention (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125 (2003) 475; Chem. Mater. 14 (2002) 2930). While the physical origin for the beneficial effect of these coatings (referred to as recombination barrier coatings in this text) is still under discussion, it is certainly accompanied by a decrease of the interface recombination rate (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125 (2003) 475). These findings inspired us to investigate the effect of recombination barrier coatings at nanostructured TiO 2 /CuInS 2 interfaces. Due to the high internal interface area, interface recombination can be expected to be the dominant recombination pathway in this type of solar cells and the investigation of concepts for its passivation is therefore crucial. Apart from the oxide coatings we also included In(OH) x S y and In 2 S 3 surface layers into our studies. In this contribution we first provide experimental evidence for the sensitivity of the TiO 2 /CuInS 2 interface with respect to recombination and then report on the substantial improvement of the photovoltaic characteristics, in particular the photocurrent density of flat and nanostructured TiO 2 /CuInS 2 interfaces using Al 2 O 3 barrier and/or In 2 S 3 buffer coatings. These findings lead for the first time to the practical realization of a nanostructured cell of this type (TiO 2 /Al 2 O 3 /In 2 S 3 /CuInS 2 ) with a current density well above 10 mA/cm 2 at 100 mW/cm 2 illumination intensity and an overall efficiency of almost 3%.