Effective Non-Radiative Interfacial Recombination Suppression Scenario Using Air Annealing for Antimony Triselenide...

Antimony triselenide (Sb₂Se₃) has become a very promising candidate for next-generation thin-film solar cells due to the merits of their low-cost, low-toxic and excellent optoelectronic properties. Despite Sb₂Se₃ thin-film photovoltaic technology having undergone rapid development over the past few years, insufficient doping concentration and severe recombination have been the most challenging limitations hindering further breakthroughs for the Sb₂Se₃ solar cells. Post-annealing treatment of the Sb₂Se₃/CdS heterojunction was demonstrated to be very helpful in improving the device performance previously. In this work, post-annealing treatments were applied to the Sb₂Se₃/CdS heterojunction under a vacuum and in the air, respectively. It was found that compared to the vacuum annealing scenario, the air-annealed device presented notable enhancements in open-circuit voltage. Ultimately a competitive power conversion efficiency of 7.62% was achieved for the champion device via air annealing. Key photovoltaic parameters of the Sb₂Se₃ solar cells were measured and the effects of post-annealing treatments using different scenarios on the devices were discussed.