Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials and Devices at Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China 2011, Volume 6, Number 2

Photovoltaics (PV) is a technology of generating electrical power by directly converting solar radiation into current electricity using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect. As one of the most promising solutions for the global energy crisis and environmental pollution, the endlessness and zero carbon emissions of photovoltaic technology plays a critical role on both fundamental research and applied technology. Since it is based on series of complex surface and interface reactions, PV technology is a huge system involving an interdisciplinary field of condensed physics, chemical synthesis and material science. Scientists at the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics (SIC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), made great achievements in developing several high performance PV materials, which are mostly focusing on chalcogenide thin film PV cells. The Laboratory of Photovoltaic Materials and Devices (LPMD) at SIC was hence established in 2003, which was consecutively ranked in this famous institute as the Most Improved and the Top Team during the latest three years. The high efficiency record (14.6%) of the solution-route fabricated CIGS thin film solar cell was proven to be in one of the world-leading places for non-vacuum CIGS cells.

With the cutting-edge nano-material and thin film technology, research at LPMD primarily covers fundamental research and applied technology of frontier PV materials and devices. Current research projects include searching for the relationship between the structure and the function at atom level of materials, designing novel energy conversion materials, integrating low cost copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) and cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin film PV devices with independent intellectual properties. Currently, LPMD is mainly focusing on: high-efficiency CIGS and CdTe thin film solar cells; novel nanostructured PV materials and new-concept devices; key solar materials including high-performance transparent conducting films, broadband antireflection coatings, and high quality graphene.

Based on the outstanding performance in these fields, LPMD is now conducting several important research projects proposed by CAS, Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China, and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). With the help of these funds, the entire system for fabricating and testing PV materials and devices has been built up. Several advanced synthesis technologies, magnetron sputtering, spin/dip coating, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), solid state reaction and other chemical synthesis methods, are adroitly applied to preparation of high quality film or crystal samples. Our lab owns most of the significant testing systems for PV materials and devices, including photoelectric conversion efficiency test system with solar simulator, X-ray Diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), NIR-UV-Vis diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS), FTIR spectra, etc. With substantial improvements in experimental facilities, LPMD is now attaining a new level. The device efficiencies of CIGS and CdTe solat cells achieve stable high values in our lab, which are 14.6% and 12.1% respectively. The transparent conducting properties of n-type ZnO:Al (0.66 Ω/sq, 88% transparent in 350－1100 nm) and p-type Cu_xS (>10³ S/cm) exceed the respective reported data in the literature. Many important results have been published in top scientific journals such as Angew. Chem., J. Am. Chem. Soc., Adv. Mater., Adv. Funct. Mater., Energy &Environ. Sci.. Nearly 80 Chinese patents including 15 foreign patents have been filed in this lab. Several advanced technologies developed are transferred to industries now.

LPMD also attaches high importance to the recruiting and training of talents as well as team construction. Now, Professor Huang, “CAS One-Hundred-Talents Scheme”, is leading this excellent and structure-optimized group. Furthermore, many young researchers and graduate students, who are full of innovative ideas and strong motivations, are now working at the forefront and have won several awards of CAS Dean’s Research Fellowship, Yandongshen special fellowship, Excellent Graduate of CAS, etc. Now, LPMD is dedicated to refining research projects, initiating more innovative researches and training more talents. It is aimed at building a world class lab and achieving more momentous scienti?c breakthroughs.

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