FASST Reactive Transfer Printing for Morphology and Structural Control of Liquid Precursor Based Inorganic Reactants

摘要

Field-Assisted Simultaneous Synthesis and Transfer (FASST~R) process offers a controllable and cost-effective method to produce Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) films for high efficiency photovoltaic devices. In the first stage of the two-stage FASST~R process two separate precursor films are formed, one deposited on the substrate and the other on a reusable printing plate, hi the second stage, the precursors are brought into intimate contact and rapidly reacted under pressure in the presence of an applied electrostatic field, effectively creating a sealed micro-reactor that ensures high material utilization efficiency, direct control of reaction pressure, and low thermal budget. The unique ability to control both precursor films independently allows for composition and deposition technique optimization, eliminating pre-reaction prior to the synthesis of CIGS. This flexibility has proven immensely valuable as is demonstrated in the results of depositing the two-reactant films by various combinations of low-cost solution-based and conventional vacuum-based physical vapor deposition techniques, producing in several minutes' high quality "hybrid" CIGS with large grains on the order of several microns. Cell efficiencies as high as 12.2% have been achieved using the FASST~R method.