Abstract
The application of titanium dioxide (TiO2) in the photovoltaic (PV) field is gaining traction as this material can be deployed in doping-free heterojunction solar cells with the role of electron selective contact. For modeling-based optimization of such contact, knowledge of the titanium oxide defect density of states (DOS) is crucial. In this paper, we report a method to extract the defect density through nondestructive optical measures, including the contribution given by small polaron optical transitions. The presence of both related to oxygen-vacancy defects and polarons is supported by the results of optical characterizations and the evaluation of previous observations resulting in a defect band fixed at 1 eV below the conduction band edge of the oxide. Solar cells employing pulsed laser deposited-TiO2 electron selective contacts were fabricated and characterized. The J-V curve of these cells showed, however, an S-shape, then a detailed analysis of the reasons for such behavior was carried out. We use a model involving the series of a standard cell equivalent circuit with a Schottky junction in order to explain these atypical performances. A good matching between the experimental measurements and the adopted theoretical model was obtained. The extracted parameters are listed and analyzed to shed light on the reasons behind the low-performance cells. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 4048-4057 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Nano Research |
Volume | 15 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Keywords
- defect density
- defects
- heterojunction
- photovoltaic (PV)
- pulsed laser deposition (PLD)
- small polaron
- solar cell
- titanium dioxide (TiO)