Proceedings of International Conference on Hybrid and Organic Photovoltaics (HOPV16)
Publication date: 28th March 2016
Tin mono-sulphide (SnS) has emerged as a promising photovoltaic material because of the earth-abundance, non-toxicity and its optical properties. SnS exhibits a high absorption coefficient (>104 cm-1) and a band gap of 1.3 eV (ca. 950 nm), which makes it an excellent light absorber for photovoltaic applications.
To date, the highest power conversion efficiency of SnS-based solar cells is up to 4.4% using the thin film architecture and SnS is fabricated by atomic layer deposition. However, there are very few attempts using cost-efficient methods; our group has published a solution-processed formation method with the device architecture: glass/ITO/planar-TiO2/SnS/P3HT/MoO3/Ag. This device achieved a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 1.2 %.1 There is still a lot of space to work on this type solar cells, including enhancement on each layer to improve the photocurrent as well as the fill factor, and especially improving the photovoltage.
In this work, we present the recent progress on optimisation of the above architecture by adding a layer of mesoporous TiO2 between planar TiO2 and SnS, and better cell performance as well as improved current and voltage are obtained. The nanostructured SnS is prepared by spin coating of a precursor solution containing tin (II) chloride and thioacetamide, followed by thermal annealing. The SnS nanoplates can be infiltrated with a polymer layer in order to get a nanostructured hybrid heterojunction. These optimised solar cells exhibit improved efficiencies up to 1.85%, with short-circuit current up to 18 mA/cm2 and open-circuit voltage up to 320 mV.
An exhaustive transient absorption spectroscopy (TAS) study on this mesoporous structure has revealed that the amount of long-lived charges generated is more than twice of the planar structure. Furthermore, we switch the solvent for the precursor of SnS from pyridine to tetrahydrofuran in order to have a greener solution-processed route, as well as obtain a more stable precursor solution. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) showed that this optimized structure eliminates the secondary phase such as SnS2 and Sn2S3. Further investigations into the optimisation of the infiltration of SnS into mesoporous TiO2 as well as overcoming the sulfur deficiency problem are ongoing in our laboratory.
1. T. Rath, L. Gury, I. Sánchez-Molina, L. Martínez and S. A. Haque, Chem. Commun., 2015, 51, 10198–10201.
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