The properties and performance of polycrystalline materials depend critically on the properties of their grain boundaries. Polycrystalline photovoltaic materials – e.g. hybrid halide perovskites, copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGSe) and cadmium telluride – have already demonstrated high efficiencies and promise cost-effective electricity supply. For CIGSe-based solar cells, an efficiency above 23% has recently been achieved using an alkali-fluoride post-deposition treatment; however, its full impact and functional principle are not yet fully understood. Here, we show direct evidence for the passivation of grain boundaries in CIGSe treated with three different alkali-fluorides through a detailed study of the nanoscale optoelectronic properties. We determine a correlation of the surface potential change at grain boundaries with the open-circuit voltage, which is supported by numerical simulations. Our results suggest that heavier alkali elements might lead to better passivation by reducing the density of charged defects and increasing the formation of secondary phases at grain boundaries.

This paper shows the application of simple dc techniques to the temperature-dependent characterization of AlGaN/ GaN HEMTs in terms of the following: 1) thermal resistance and 2) ohmic series resistance (at low drain bias). Despite their simplicity, these measurement techniques are shown to give valuable information about the device behavior over a wide range of ambient/channel temperatures. The experimental results are validated by comparison with independent measurements and numerical simulations.

We study the impact of different alkali post‐deposition treatments by thermal admittance spectroscopy and temperature‐dependent current‐voltage (IVT) characteristics of high‐efficiency Cu(In,Ga)Se₂thin‐film solar cells fabricated from low‐temperature and high‐temperature co‐evaporated absorbers. Capacitance steps observed by admittance spectroscopy for all samples agree with the widely observed N1 signature and show a clear correlation to a transport barrier evident fromIVTcharacteristics measured in the dark, indicating that defects are likely not responsible for these capacitance steps. Activation energies extracted from capacitance spectra andIVTcharacteristics vary considerably between different samples but show no concise correlation to the alkali species used in the post‐deposition treatments. Numerical device simulations show that the transport barrier in our devices might be related to conduction band offsets in the absorber/buffer/window stack.

Growth of Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ (CIGS) absorbers under Cu‐poor conditions gives rise to incorporation of numerous defects into the bulk, whereas the same absorber grown under Cu‐rich conditions leads to a stoichiometric bulk with minimum defects. This suggests that CIGS absorbers grown under Cu‐rich conditions are more suitable for solar cell applications. However, the CIGS solar cell devices with record efficiencies have all been fabricated under Cu‐poor conditions, despite the expectations. Therefore, in the present work, both Cu‐poor and Cu‐rich CIGS cells are investigated, and the superior properties of the internal interfaces of the Cu‐poor CIGS cells, such as the p–n junction and grain boundaries, which always makes them the record‐efficiency devices, are shown. More precisely, by employing a correlative microscopy approach, the typical fingerprints for superior properties of internal interfaces necessary for maintaining a lower recombination activity in the cell is discovered. These are a Cu‐depleted and Cd‐enriched CIGS absorber surface, near the p–n junction, as well as a negative Cu factor (∆β) and high Na content (>1.5 at%) at the grain boundaries. Thus, this work provides key factors governing the device performance (efficiency), which can be considered in the design of next‐generation solar cells.