Large-scale synthesis of semiconducting Cu(In,Ga)Se2 nanoparticles for screen printing application

• Autor(a) principal: Gonçalves, Bruna Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: LaGrow, Alec P., Pyrlin, Sergey, Owens-Baird, Bryan, Botelho, Gabriela, Marques, L., Ramos, Marta M. D., Kovnir, Kirill, Lanceros-Méndez, S., Kolen’ko, Yury V.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/73949
• topic: Cu(In,Ga)Se2; Nanoparticles; Wurtzite-type; Screen printing photoabsorber; Cu(In; Ga)Se-2; Science & Technology

During the last few decades, the interest over chalcopyrite and related photovoltaics has been growing due the outstanding structural and electrical properties of the thin-film Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ photoabsorber. More recently, thin film deposition through solution processing has gained increasing attention from the industry, due to the potential low-cost and high-throughput production. To this end, the elimination of the selenization procedure in the synthesis of Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ nanoparticles with following dispersion into ink formulations for printing/coating deposition processes are of high relevance. However, most of the reported syntheses procedures give access to tetragonal chalcopyrite Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ nanoparticles, whereas methods to obtain other structures are scarce. Herein, we report a large-scale synthesis of high-quality Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ nanoparticles with wurtzite hexagonal structure, with sizes of 10–70 nm, wide absorption in visible to near-infrared regions, and [Cu]/[In + Ga] ≈ 0.8 and [Ga]/[Ga + In] ≈ 0.3 metal ratios. The inclusion of the synthesized NPs into a water-based ink formulation for screen printing deposition results in thin films with homogenous thickness of ≈4.5 µm, paving the way towards environmentally friendly roll-to-roll production of photovoltaic systems.