Abstract:
Thin-film solar cells technology is one of the solutions for expensive silicon solar cells. The kesteritestructured
Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) semiconductor has been considered as a promising light-harvesting material
and a great progress on CZTS based solar cells has been achieved during the past few years. For the
fabrication of CZTS solar cells, vacuum and non-vacuum deposition techniques have been reported. Among
these methods, non-vacuum techniques such as spray pyrolysis, spin coating, and electrodeposition are
widely being used owing to their simplicity and the low cost. In this study, CZTS thin films were prepared
on Florine doped tin oxide (FTO) by spray pyrolysis, spin coating, and electrodeposition methods and their
properties were compared. The Cu–Zn–Sn (CZT) containing precursor solution for spray pyrolysis and spin
coating was prepared by solution-based sol-gel method. In the spray pyrolysis method, the precursor
solution was sprayed on to the heated FTO substrate at 150 0C using compressed Nitrogen as a carrier
gas. In the spin coating method, the precursor solution was spin coated on the FTO at 2500 rpm and dried
at 1500C on the hot plate. The co-electrodeposited Cu-Zn-Sn film was grown by using a metallic precursor
solution and the deposition was carried out potentiostatically using a 3-electrode cell with a platinum
counter electrode and Ag/AgCl reference electrode. The stacked metals layer which prepared by three
different technics were sulfurized by annealing in a sulfur-nitrogen environment for 15 minutes at 280 0C.
The photoelectrochemical response during chopped illumination was studied comparatively for each
deposition techniques. The electrodeposited films were observed to be shown well with good
photocurrent response, compared with the CZTS films made by spray pyrolysis and spin coating techniques.
All prepared CZTS films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM),
energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), UV- visible spectroscopy to obtained detail of the crystal
structure, surface morphology, atomic composition and optical properties of the CZTS thin films
respectively.
