Surface passivated colloidal CuIn(S,Se)2 quantum dots for quantum dot heterojunction solar cells (Presentation Recording)

Abstract

Colloidal quantum dot heterojunction thin film solar cells (CQD-TFSC) utilize facile thin film deposition methods and promise high photon conversion efficiencies (PCE) to cost ratio which is highly desired for commercialization. So far, surface passivated PbS CQD-TFSCs show the highest PCE results, reaching 9.2% with good stability. Among other potential candidates, CuInSe2 CQDs stand out as a non-toxic material with high potential for performance, judging on bulk Cu(Ga,In)(S,Se)2 TFSCs reaching 20% PCE, with high stability. CuInSe2 CQDs has advantage over bulk films, mainly the much less expensive manufacturing cost of uniform deposition on large areas. Ga is known to cause phase separation in the bulk CIGS system. In a CQD form, CuInSe2 band gap can be tuned between 1 to 1.6 eV by quantum confinement without need for Ga and this eliminates the phase separation issue. Within our best knowledge, there are no reports on surface trap passivated CuInSe2 CQD-TFSCs. However Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)2 colloidal particles were cast in thin film form and fused to form bulk-like crystals by various annealing conditions for solar cell devices. In this work, we investigated well-passivated CuInSe2 CQDs on n-type TiO2 and ZnO layers to form depleted heterojunction structure. We prepared luminescent CuInSe2 CQDs by synthetic wet chemistry methods and passivated the surface with 3-mercaptopropionic acid or tetrabutylammonium iodide using solid-state ligand exchange. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was used to confirm the ligand boding and surface coverage of the quantum dots. We will present the effect of synthesis and thin film preparation conditions on the solar cell device performance