Researchers at IIT Mandi have developed high-quality, uniform skinny movies of nickel oxide on a silicon substrate utilizing an aerosol-assisted chemical vapor deposition approach, with nickel nitrate because the precursor materials.
From pv journal India
Extremely selective contacts are the important thing to attaining excessive effectivity in skinny movie photo voltaic cells. These contacts permit one kind of provider (holes) to conduct and block different sorts (electrons).
Nickel oxide (NiO) is a wonderful materials for hole-selective contacts and is broadly utilized in many PV applied sciences. Nickel oxide movies with thicknesses within the nanometer vary (100 thousand occasions smaller than the width of a human hair) have to be developed to be used in advanced-architecture silicon photo voltaic cells.
Nevertheless, the present technique of creating nanometric skinny nickel oxide membranes by sputtering could be very costly as a result of the tools used to provide it have to be imported. Precursor components resembling nickel acetylacetonate used within the improvement of those membranes are very costly. The price of this system limits the chances of its use.
Researchers on the Indian Institute of Expertise Mandi (IIT Mandi) have developed a low-cost course of to provide ultra-thin movies of metallic oxides from cheaper beginning supplies. Particularly, they used an aerosol-assisted chemical vapor deposition approach to deposit a nickel oxide skinny movie on a silicon substrate.
“The aerosol-assisted chemical vapor deposition approach can produce high-quality, uniform skinny movies on varied surfaces, together with silicon, by delivering a vapor section precursor within the type of an aerosol,” mentioned mentioned researcher Kunal Ghosh, who led the examine. “Aerosol permits the deposition of a variety of oxide-based supplies with excessive precision, making it a flexible and efficient methodology for varied purposes in supplies science and engineering:”
The workforce used nickel nitrate hexahydrate because the nickel salt and the deposition was carried out at 550 C for a interval of quarter-hour to provide nickel oxide movies with a thickness of roughly 15 nanometers. They investigated the morphology and composition of nickel oxide movies produced utilizing completely different characterization methods.
The undertaking continues to be within the early phases of improvement. Nevertheless, the know-how has the potential to be adopted by the business. This analysis will enhance the manufacturing technique of superior structure silicon photovoltaic units, lowering the associated fee and complexity of business methods.
“Our analysis exhibits that it’s doable to develop a cheap and scalable course of for the manufacturing of metallic oxide layers for photo voltaic cells,” mentioned Ghosh. “This new methodology has the potential to revolutionize the photo voltaic business by lowering the associated fee and complexity of present manufacturing methods. As well as, as all the course of together with the tools is completed in-house, the ensuing IP will contribute to India’s self-reliance within the space of advanced-architecture silicon photo voltaic cells.
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