• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.17-24
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• 2021

Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) can be fabricated through solution process economically with variable bandgap that is controlled by composition of precursor solution. Tandem cells in which PSCs combined with silicon solar cells have potential to reach high power conversion efficiency over 30%, however, lack of long-term stability of PSCs is an obstacle to commercialization. Degradation of PSCs is mainly attributed to the mass transport of halide and metal electrode materials. In order to ensure the long-term stability, the mass transport should be inhibited. In this study, we confirmed degradation behaviors due to the mass transport in PSCs and designed buffer layers with LiF and/or SnO₂ to improve the long-term stability by suppressing the mass transport. Under high-temperature storage test at 85℃, PSCs without the buffer layers were degraded by forming PbI₂, AgI, and the delta phase of the perovskite material, while PSCs with the buffer layers showed improved stability with keeping the original phase of the perovskite. When the LiF buffer and encapsulation were applied to PSCs, superior long-term stability on 85℃-85% RH dump heat test was achieved; efficiency drop was not observed after 200 h. It was also confirmed that 90.6% of the initial efficiency was maintained after 200 hours of maximum power tracking test under AM 1.5G-1SUN illumination. Here, we have demonstrated that the buffer layer is essential to achieve long-term stability of PSCs.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.349-354
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• 1999

The temperature dependences of the Hall coefficient, carrier mobility, electrical resistivity, Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity, and figure-of-merit of the undoped and $CdI_2$-doped 90% $Bi_2Te_3-10% Bi_2Se_3$, single crystals, grown by the Bridgman method, have been characterized at temperatures ranging from 77K to 600K. The saturated carrier concentration and degenerate temperature of the undoped 90% $Bi_2Te_3-10% Bi_2Se_3$ single crystal are $5.85\times10_{18}cm^{-3}$ and 127K, respectively. The scattering parameter of the 90% $Bi_2Te_3-10% Bi_2Se_3$ single crystal is determined to b -0.23, and the electron mobility to hole mobility ratio ($\mu_e/\mu_h)$ is 1.45. The bandgap energy at 0K of the 90% <$Bi_2Te_3-10% Bi_2Se_3$ single crystal is 0.200 eV. Adding $CdI_2$as a donor dopant, a maximum figure-of-merit of $3.2\times10^{-3}/K$$CdI_2$-doped specimen.

• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.107-112
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• 2020

Recently, the atomically thin transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductors have attracted much attention owing to their remarkable properties such as tunable bandgap with high carrier mobility, flexibility, transparency, etc. However, because these TMD materials have a significant drawback that they are easily degraded in an ambient environment, various attempts have been made to improve chemical stability. In this research article, I report a method to improve the air stability of WSe₂ one of the TMD materials via surface passivation with an h-BN insulator, and its application to field-effect transistors (FETs). With a modified hot pick-up transfer technique, a vertical heterostructure of h-BN/WSe₂ was successfully made, and then the structure was used to fabricate the top-gate bottom-contact FETs. The fabricated WSe₂-based FET exhibited not only excellent air stability, but also high hole mobility of 150 ㎠/Vs at room temperature, on/off current ratios up to 3×10⁶, and 192 mV/decade of subthreshold swing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.284-284
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• 2016

Topological insulator (TI) is a bulk-insulating material with topologically protected Dirac surface states in the band gap. In particular, $Bi_2Se_3$ attracted great attention as a model three-dimensional TI due to its simple electronic structure of the surface states in a relatively large band gap (~0.3 eV). However, experimental efforts using $Bi_2Se_3$ have been difficult due to the abundance of structural defects, which frequently results in the bulk conduction being dominant over the surface conduction in transport due to the bulk doping effects of the defect sites. One promising approach in avoiding this problem is to reduce the structural defects by heteroepitaxially grow $Bi_2Se_3$ on a substrate with a compatible lattice structure, while also preventing surface degradation by encapsulating the pristine interface between $Bi_2Se_3$ and the substrate in a clean growth environment. A particularly promising choice of substrate for the heteroepitaxial growth is hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), which has the same two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) layered structure and hexagonal lattice symmetry as $Bi_2Se_3$. Moreover, since h-BN is a dielectric insulator with a large bandgap energy of 5.97 eV and chemically inert surfaces, it is well suited as a substrate for high mobility electronic transport studies of vdW material systems. Here we report the heteroepitaxial growth and characterization of high quality topological insulator $Bi_2Se_3$ thin films prepared on h-BN layers. Especially, we used molecular beam epitaxy to achieve high quality TI thin films with extremely low defect concentrations and an ideal interface between the films and substrates. To optimize the morphology and microstructural quality of the films, a two-step growth was performed on h-BN layers transferred on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) compatible substrates. The resulting $Bi_2Se_3$ thin films were highly crystalline with atomically smooth terraces over a large area, and the $Bi_2Se_3$ and h-BN exhibited a clear heteroepitaxial relationship with an atomically abrupt and clean interface, as examined by high-resolution TEM. Magnetotransport characterizations revealed that this interface supports a high quality topological surface state devoid of bulk contribution, as evidenced by Hall, Shubnikov-de Haas, and weak anti-localization measurements. We believe that the experimental scheme demonstrated in this talk can serve as a promising method for the preparation of high quality TI thin films as well as many other heterostructures based on 2D vdW layered materials.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.93-98
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• 2017

This experiment investigated characteristic changes in a $Cu_2ZnSnS_4$(CZTS) solar cell by applying a $Zn(O_x,S_{1-x})$ butter layer with various compositions on the upper side of the absorber layer. Among the four single layers such as $Zn(O_{0.76},S_{0.24})$, $Zn(O_{0.56},S_{0.44})$, $Zn(O_{0.33},S_{0.67})$, and $Zn(O_{0.17},S_{0.83})$, the $Zn(O_{0.76},S_{0.24})$ buffer layer was applied to the device due to its bandgap structure for suppressing electron-hole recombination. In the application of the $Zn(O_{0.76},S_{0.24})$ buffer layer to the device, the buffer layer in the device showed the composition of $Zn(O_{0.7},S_{0.3})$ because S diffused into the buffer layer from the absorber layer. The $Zn(O_{0.7},S_{0.3})$ buffer layer, having a lower energy level ($E_V$) than a CdS buffer layer, improved the $J_{SC}$ and $V_{OC}$ characteristics of the CZTS solar cell because the $Zn(O_{0.7},S_{0.3})$ buffer layer effectively suppressed electron-hole recombination. A substitution of the CdS buffer layer by the $Zn(O_{0.7},S_{0.3})$ buffer layer improved the efficiency of the CZTS solar cell from 2.75% to 4.86%.