Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Lab-scale devices show high promise, but the scaling-up remains a
challenge for the PV research community to overcome uniformity,
reproducibility, and yieldissues.
3.7 Summary
This chapter reviewed the strengths, advantages, disadvantages,
and future prospects of electrodeposition as a low-cost and
large-area semiconductor growth technique for applications in
macroelectronic devices such as solar panels and large-area
display devices. To highlight its strengths, experimental evidence
obtained from XRD, XRF, PEC, optical absorption, and photolu-
minescence have been presented. It has been shown that when
materials are grown in optimised conditions, electrodeposition is
capable of producing high-quality materials for electronic device
applications. This chapter also demonstrated the possibility of
the fabrication of graded bandgap multi-layer solar cell device
structures using electrodeposited CIGS with promising device
properties.
Electrodeposition satisfies all three criteria necessary for the
research and development of PV solar cells. This technique fulfils
(i) low-cost, (ii) scalability, and (iii) manufacturability and, there-
fore, is capable of cutting down the costs of solar panels drastically
in the future. Many research groups are now reporting the highest-
purityelectrodepositedmaterialsandtheexcellentqualitiesofthin-
film devices made out ofthese materials.
These promising experimental results invoke systematic and
focussed research efforts related to electrodeposited semiconduc-
tors, and this method has much to offer to the field of macroelec-
tronics such as photovoltaics and large-area display devices and, in
particular, to the new emerging area of nanotechnology.
References
1. W. J. Danaher and L. E. Lyons(1978)
Nature
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271
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2. F. A. Kroger (1978)
J. Electrochem. Soc.
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