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Surface activation of rigid and flexible substrates for thin film photovoltaics using atmospheric pressure plasma

conference contribution
posted on 2017-01-06, 14:01 authored by Fabiana Lisco, Alexander H. Shaw, Alec Wright, Felipe IzaFelipe Iza, Michael WallsMichael Walls
Reducing fabrication costs is a major driving force in photovoltaic research. Atmospheric processes such as spin coating, spraying or printing are being developed to reduce the cost/Wp of CIGS, CZTS and perovskite solar technologies. For all technologies, surface cleaning and activation prior to thin film deposition is required and for this vacuum based low pressure plasma is a well-established technique. However, a vacuum based surface pre-treatment is not compatible with atmospheric deposition methods. We show that atmospheric-pressure plasmas are highly effective in activating the surface of substrates commonly used in photovoltaic device fabrication and demonstrate its effectiveness on both rigid and flexible substrates. The effectiveness of using atmosphericpressure plasmas to increase surface energy is demonstrated using Water Contact Angle (WCA) measurements and chemical changes are analysed using X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) images show no alteration of the surface morphology of the substrates after the plasma treatment.

Funding

The authors are grateful to UKERC for provision of funding through the EPSRC Supergen SuperSolar Hub.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

43rd IEEE Photovoltaics Specialists Conference

Pages

2204 - 2209

Citation

LISCO, F. ... et al., 2016. Surface activation of rigid and flexible substrates for thin film photovoltaics using atmospheric pressure plasma. IN: 43rd IEEE Photovoltaics Specialists Conference, Portland, OR, 5-10 June 2016, pp. 2204 - 2209.

Publisher

© IEEE

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-10-10

Publication date

2016

Notes

Closed access © 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

ISBN

978-1-5090-2724-8

Language

  • en

Location

Portland, OR