Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Electrochemical Deposition of Solar
Energy Materials
3.1 Introduction
Semiconducting materials provide the main functions of a photo-
voltaic (PV) device, namely the optical absorption and creation of
rectifying junctions to convert light into electricity. Therefore, the
establishment of a suitable materials growth technique is essential
in the PV development process. Various semiconductor growth
techniques have been developed in the past for microelectronic
devices (
∼
1
μ
m
2
). The melt growth or Bridgman technique, molec-
ular beam epitaxy (MBE), metalorganic chemical vapour deposition
(MOCVD), and their modifications are well known as high-quality
semiconductor growth techniques. However, these techniques are
not suitable for manufacturing macroelectronic devices (
∼
1m
2
),
such as PV panels and large-area display devices. Semiconductor
growth techniques such as sputtering, close-space sublimation,
electrochemical deposition, chemical bath deposition (CBD), spray
pyrolysis, and their modifications have been developed to grow
large-area thin films for these purposes. This chapter is devoted
to providing a background to the electrochemical semiconductor
