• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.526-532
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• 2015

Solar cells with other alternative energies are being importantly recognized related with post-2020 climate change regime formation. In a point of view of materials, solar cells are classified to organic and inorganic solar cells which can provide a plant-scale electricity. In particular, recent studies about compound semiconductor solar cells, such as III-V tandem solar cells, chalcopyrite-series CIGSSe solar cells, and kesterite-series CZTSSe solar cells were rapidly accelerated. In this report, we introduce a research trend and technical issues for the compound semiconductor solar cells.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.28 no.12
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• pp.748-757
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• 2018

Inorganic semiconductor compounds, e.g., CIGS and CZTS, are promising materials for thin film solar cells because of their high light absorption coefficient and stability. Research on thin film solar cells using this compound has made remarkable progress in the last two decades. Vacuum-based processes, e.g., co-evaporation and sputtering, are well established to obtain high-efficiency CIGS and/or CZTS thin film solar cells with over 20 % of power conversion. However, because the vacuum-based processes need high cost equipment, they pose technological barriers to producing low-cost and large area photovoltaic cells. Recently, non-vacuum based processes, for example the solution/nanoparticle precursor process, the electrodeposition method, or the polymer-capped precursors process, have been intensively studied to reduce capital expenditure. Lately, over 17 % of energy conversion efficiency has been reported by solution precursors methods in CIGS solar cells. This article reviews the status of non-vacuum techniques that are used to fabricate CIGS and CZTS thin films solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.25 no.10
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• pp.7-22
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• 2008

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.91-97
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• 2009

The performance of GaInP/GaAs tandem solar cells with AlInP growth temperatures of 680$^{\circ}C$ and 700 $^{\circ}C$ on n-type GaAs (100) substrate with 2$^{\circ}$ and 6$^{\circ}$ tilt angles has been investigated. The series resistance and open circuit voltage of the fabricated tandem solar cells are affected by the substrate tilt angles and the growth temperatures of the window layer when zinc is doped in the tunnel diode. With carbon doping as a p-type doping source in the tunnel diode and the effort of current matching between top and bottom cells, GaInP/GaAs tandem solar cell has been exhibited 25.58% efficiency.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.235-235
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• 2007

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.24 no.8
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• pp.434-442
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• 2014

Serious environmental problems have been caused by the greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide($CO_2$) or nitrogen oxides($NO_x$) generated by the use of fossil fuels, including oil and liquefied natural gas. Many countries, including our own, the United States, those of the European Union and other developed countries around the world; have shown growing interest in clean energy, and have been concentrating on the development of new energy-saving materials and devices. Typical non-fossil-fuel sources include solar cells, wind power, tidal power, nuclear power, and fuel cells. In particular, organic solar cells(OSCs) have relatively low power-conversion efficiency(PCE) in comparison with inorganic(silicon) based solar cells, compound semiconductor solar cells and the CIGS [$Cu(In_{1-x}Ga_x)Se_2$] thin film solar cells. Recently, organic cell efficiencies greater than 10 % have been obtained by means of the development of new organic semiconducting materials, which feature improvements in crystalline properties, as well as in the quantum-dot nano-structure of the active layers. In this paper, a brief overview of solar cells in general is presented. In particular, the current development status of the next-generation OSCs including their operation principle, device-manufacturing processes, and improvements in the PCE are described.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.11.1-11.1
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• 2010

As one of the non-vacuum, low temperature fabrication route, electrochemical synthesis has been focused for pursuing the cost-effective pathway to produce high efficiency photovoltaic devices. Especially the availability to form the thin film structure on flexible substrate would be the great advantage of electrochemical process. The successful synthesis of the most favorable absorber materials such as CdTe and CIGS has been reported by many researchers, however, the efficiency of electrochemically synthesized could not exceed that from vacuum process, because of microstructural controllability and compositional variation on devices. In this study, we represent the effect of process parameters on the microstructure and composition of compound semiconductor during the synthesis, and propose the photovoltaic characteristics of electrochemically synthesized solar cells.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.08a
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• pp.67-67
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• 2011

Compound semiconductor/CNTs composites have shown considerably improved efficiency improvement in photovoltaic devices, which is often attributed to two different factors. One is the formation of efficient electronic energy cascade structures. The other effect of CNTs on the performance of photovoltaic devices is the decrement of interfacial resistance. The interfacial resistances at n-type/ p-type materials and/or n-type materials/TCO electrode are reduced by an outstanding electrical property of CNTs. In addition to the effects of CNTs, we report the third reason for increment of efficiency in photovoltaic devices by CNT's well-known electrical field enhancement effects. The improved ${\beta}$ values in reverse-FE currents of CIGS electrode with SWNTs layers indicate the enhancement of electrical field in photovoltaic devices, which implies the acceleration of the electron transfer rate in the cell. Due to the formation of an efficient electronic energy cascade structure and the decrease of the interfacial resistance as well as the improvement of the electrical field in the photovoltaic devices, the power conversion efficiency of electrochemically deposited superstrate-type CIGS solar cells was increased 24.3% in the presence of SWNTs and showed 10.40% conversion efficiency.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2012.03a
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• pp.400-403
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• 2012

$Cu_2ZnSnSe_4$(CZTSe) is emerged as a promising material for thin-film solar cells because of non-toxic, inexpensive and earth abundant more than $Cu(In,Ga)Se_2$ materials. For fabricating compound semiconductor thin-film solar cells, CdS is widely used for a buffer layer which fabricated by a chemical bath deposition method (CBD). Through the experiment, we controlled deposition temperature and mol ratio of solution conditions to find the proper grain 크기 and exact composition. The optimum CdS layers were characterized in terms of surface morphology by using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM). The optimized CdS layer process was applied on CZTSe thin-films. The thickness of buffer layer related with device performance of solar cells which controlled by deposition time. Local surface potential of CdS/CZTSe thin-films was investigated by Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM). From these results, we can deduce local electric properties with different thickness of buffer layer on CZTSe thin-films. Therefore, we investigated the effect of CdS buffer layer thickness on the CZTSe thin-films for decreasing device losses. From this study, we can suggest buffer layer thickness which contributes to efficiencies and device performance of CZTSe thin-film solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics A
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• v.28A no.9
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• pp.752-760
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• 1991

The computer aided analysis is performed to investigate the influence of physical parameters (thickness and doping concentration, etc.) in the window, emitter, base on the efficiency characteristics of a uniformly doped hetroface cell. A field aided heteroface cell is newly designed on a basis of optimum data obtained from the theoretical analysis. The field aided heteroface cell fabricated using MOCVD exhibits a total/active area conversion efficiency of EFF. (tot) = 18.9% /EFF. (act.) = 21.4% under the natural incident light of 56.2 mW/cm\ulcorner having a low series resistance of Rs = 0.94 \ulcornercm\ulcornerand a high spectral response of S.R. (ext) > 90% in a range of $7700{\AA}$ < $8500{\AA}$.