Well-Controlled Dielectric Nanomeshes by Colloidal Nanosphere Lithography for Optoelectronic Enhancement of Ultrathin Cu(In,Ga)Se Solar Cells.

Ultrathin Cu(In,Ga)Se (CIGSe) solar cells pose challenges of incomplete absorption and back contact recombination. In this work, we applied the simple collodial nanosphere lithography and fabricated 2D SiO nanomeshes (NMs), which simultaneously benefit ultrathin CIGSe solar cells electrically and optically. Electrically, the NMs are capable of passivating the back contact recombination and increasing the minimum bandgap of absorbers. Optically, the parasitic absorption in Mo as a main optical loss is reduced. Consequently, the SiO NMs give rise to an increase of 3.5 mA/cm in short circuit current density (J) and of 57 mV in open circuit voltage increase (V), leading to an absolute efficiency enhancement as high as 2.6% (relatively 30%) for CIGSe solar cells with an absorber thickness of only 370 nm and a steep back Ga/[Ga + In] grading.