Hot electron based photovoltaic cells with Schottky barrier

Abstract

In recent years plasmonics has attracted many researchers. Plasmonics opened a new gate to the solar energy. Properties of metal semiconductor junction is found to be very convincing and promising in the field of solar cell. Ag and ZnO have showed their capabilities in the optical devices and as ZnO is an abundant material found on earth it is a very promising material for the production of solar cell. High quality semiconductor of n-type ZnO film was deposited on FTO coated glass with the help of pulsed laser deposition. Different characteristics were measured on the configuration Ag/ZnO/FTO coated glass which is a Schottky barrier diode. Firstly, physical characterization was done on the sample by XRD and two peaks were observed at (002) and (103). The lattice parameters were calculated from the XRD data. Surface morphology was also done with the help of AFM and average roughness was calculated. Optical characterization was done with the help of UV-spectroscopy and transmission spectra, reflectance spectra and absorbance spectra were plotted. From these plots band gap was calculated and was found to be 3.34 eV. Finally, electrical characterization was also done and Schottky barrier was observed on samples having thick film. From the I-V characteristics efficiency was also calculated and was found to be 4.48125E-5 %. With the help of I-V characteristics, other parameters were also calculated such as ideality factor, reverse saturation current and barrier height were also calculated and were found to be 2.472, 6.855 A and 0.576 eV respectively.