Transparent

Conducting Oxides
for Photovoltaics

Elvira Fortunato, David Ginley, Hideo Hosono,

and David C. Paine
Abstract
Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) are an increasingly important component of
photovoltaic (PV) devices, where they act as electrode elements, structural templates,
and diffusion barriers, and their work function controls the open-circuit device voltage.
They are employed in applications that range from crystalline-Si heterojunction with
intrinsic thin layer (HIT) cells to organic PV polymer solar cells. The desirable characteristics of TCO materials that are common to all PV technologies are similar to the
requirements for TCOs for flat-panel display applications and include high optical transmissivity across a wide spectrum and low resistivity. Additionally, TCOs for terrestrial PV
applications must use low-cost materials, and some may require device-technologyspecific properties. We review the fundamentals of TCOs and the matrix of TCO
properties and processing as they apply to current and future PV technologies.

Introduction
There is a plethora of emerging approaches to low-cost, high-efficiency solar
cells. Nearly all of these photovoltaic (PV)
technologies employ transparent conducing oxides (TCOs) as an integral part of
the basic device structure. These solar cell
architectures are based on the use of new
lower-cost semiconductors, thin films of
conventional semiconductors, and organic
inorganic hybrids, and many are rapidly
attaining commercial viability. Each PV technology has different requirements for the
TCO layer, leading to a reexamination of
these materials. Coupled to this is an effort
to make conventional cells more efficient
by improving the junction characteristics.
As can be seen in Table I, many of the
needs and requirements of new PV technologies extend well beyond the conventional TCO characteristics of transparency
and conductivity. There is, for instance, an
increasing desire to employ TCO layers as
diffusion barriers, to control the contact work
function, to provide an interface with organic and other materials, and to have the
TCO also act as a light trap. Low process
temperatures and increased process flexibility are critical for many devices. This need
for improved performance in a wide range
of areas coupled with the ever-rising price

242

of In is driving a renaissance in the investigation of novel TCOs for PV applications.

PV devices require at least one electrode
that can provide both optical access and a
low-resistance electrical connection. Materials that combine optical transparency over
much of the solar spectrum with reasonable electrical conductivity generally fall
into three classes: very thin pure metals,
highly doped conjugated organic polymers,
and degenerately doped wide-bandgap
oxide or nitride semiconductors. For PV applications, the choice of TCO is driven by
additional considerations, including work
function, band alignment, materials compatibility, processing, and cost. The focus
of this article is on the selection and use of
TCOs for current and future photovoltaic
applications.

Transparent Conducting Oxides:

Basic Performance
Considerations
The optical and electrical performance
of TCOs is intimately tied to the fundamental band structure of the material and,
therefore, periodic distribution of potential
in the crystal. This would, at first glance,
suggest that amorphous materials, where
the long-range order of the crystalline

structure has been disrupted, would yield

materials with dramatically different optical and electrical properties. In the case of
indium oxide, this proves to be not the
case, and both the crystalline and amorphous states of indium oxide, as will be
discussed, yield usable TCO materials.
Oxides with a fundamental bandgap of
3 eV or more are insulators at room temperature in the undoped state. To become
conducting, the oxide must be doped to
degeneracy by increasing the free carrier
density enough to move the Fermi level
into the conduction band. Degenerate doping requires a source of electron donors in
the form of point defects (often oxygen vacancies) or impurities with an ionization
energy close to the conduction band; this
severely limits the selection of TCO materials. In some oxidesin particular, those
with d10 cations such as indium oxide, zinc
oxide, tin oxide, and cadmium oxide
native stoichiometric point defects like
oxygen vacancies are readily ionized and
thereby donate electrons to the conduction
band. Further doping is usually required
(for example, Al in ZnO, Sn in In2O3, and
Sb in SnO2), and these dopants must find
substitutional sites in the lattice. This high
level of ionized impurities in the form of
charged native point defects or impurity
atoms typically leads to a decrease in carrier mobility () and represents a tradeoff
when optimizing the resistivity of the material.
Extrinsic dopants in the form of intentionally added impurities can be either
cationic (for example, Sn4+ substitutionally
on a three-valent In site in In2O3) or anionic
(F substitutionally on an O site in SnO2). It
is important to point out that the native
stoichiometric point defects like these oxygen vacancies are not mobile at room temperature, and hence ionic conduction does
not play a role in the conductivity of TCO
materials at room temperature. Furthermore, all current practical transparent conductors are degenerately doped n-type with
either intentionally added impurities or
native point defects created through nonstoichiometric deposition conditions.
For a TCO to be of interest for PV electrode applications, it must transmit freely
across the solar spectrum. The shortwavelength (UV) cutoff corresponds to
the fundamental bandgap of the material,
whereas the long-wavelength (IR) edge
corresponds to the free carrier plasma resonance frequency. These critical optical properties are directly influenced by the carrier
density and mobility in a way that was
first described for ITO by Kostlin.1 In general, for a material to be transparent across
the visible spectrum, its bandgap must be
greater than 3 eV to enable transmission

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Transparent Conducting Oxides for Photovoltaics

Table I: Transparent Conducting Oxides (TCOs) Employed in Photovoltaic

Devices.
Cell Type

TCO in Current Use

TCO Needs

Materials Goals

Heterojunction with
intrinsic thin layer
(HIT) cell

Indium tin oxide

(ITO)

Smooth, good
interfacial properties,
very good
conductivity, lowtemperature
deposition, light
trapping

Indium zinc oxide (IZO),

indium-free materials,
ZnO

Copper indium
gallium selenide
(CIGS)

Intrinsic-ZnO/Al:ZnO

Interfacial stability to
CdS, low-temperature
deposition, resistance
to diffusion and
shorting, need to
make/improve the
junction

Single-layer TCO to
replace two layers and
CdS layer

CdTe

(SnO2)
Zn2SnO4 /Cd2SnO4

Stable interface to
CdS/CdTe at
temperature, diffusion
barrier

Doping of ZnSnOx
materials, single-layer
TCO

Nano-hybrid polymer
cell

ZnO, SnO2, TiO2

Nanostructure with
right length scale,
work-function
matching, interface
with organic, correct
doping level for
carrier transport

Self-organized structures
coreshell structures,
new nonconventional
TCOs

Grtzel cell

TiO2

Nanostructure with
high electron mobility

Amorphous Si

SnO2, ITO, and ZnO;

many cells employ
two TCOs

Temperature stability,
chemical stability, and
appropriate texture for
both TCO layers

Improved TiO2
morphology and possible
use of doped materials,
new non-TiO2 materials
Higher conductivity,
texture, and ohmic
contact for both TCO
layers

up to the near UV (0.4 m) wavelength,

and its free carrier plasma resonance
absorption must lie in the near-infrared
(1.5 m) or longer wavelengths. Increasing
carrier density decreases resistivity but also
has the drawback of shifting the IR absorption edge toward the visible, thus narrowing the transmission window. This shift
at the IR end of the spectrum is determined
by the plasma oscillation of the free carriers that screen the incident electromagnetic
wave via intraband transitions within the
conduction band. The characteristic wavelength (p) for IR reflection in ITO is well
predicted by the Drude model. The position
of the UV edge is dependent, in part, on the
free carrier density in the material. Straightforward analysis of the density of states in
the conduction band reveals that the UV
edge will shift to shorter wavelengths

with increasing carrier density (n) because

the change in the optical bandgap (E) increases with carrier density as E n3/2.

TCO Materials
The first TCO was reported in 1907 by
Baedeker,2 who used a primitive vapor deposition system to deposit thin-film CdO
that was both optically transparent and
electrically conducting. Since then, three
oxides have emerged as commercially important transparent conductors: indium
oxide, tin oxide, and zinc oxide. The properties and crystal chemistry of the transparent conducting indium oxide family of
materials is discussed in some detail in the
following sections because it is the highestperformance, best-understood material in the
TCO class. By volume, however, the mostdeposited TCO today is SnO2, which is

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used in IR-efficient architectural window

applications. ZnO is also primarily currently used in window coatings (multilayer stacks with Ag), but recent
processing-related performance improvements and low cost make it an attractive
replacement for high-cost In-based TCOs.

Indium-Based TCO Materials

The TCOs most widely used for display
applications are crystalline ITO (c-ITO),
amorphous ITO (a-ITO), and amorphous
IZO (a-IZO). The most common method
for the deposition of these TCOs is dc/rf
magnetron sputter deposition.
In general, ITO is deposited from sintered
ceramic In2O3 targets containing between
3 wt% and 10 wt% SnO2, whereas IZO targets contain 710 wt% ZnO. At present,
crystalline ITO deposited onto substrates
heated to 250350C offers the lowest
resistivity currently available (13 104
cm). Two alternatives to c-ITO that may
be processed at room temperature are a-ITO
and a-IZO. Both of these amorphous materials have slightly inferior electrical
transport properties compared with c-ITO,
but they are, in some applications, favored
over crystalline ITO because they offer improved lithographic line definition due to
the more controllable wet-etch characteristics of the amorphous phase. In addition,
a-IZO offers the advantage of not requiring the addition of oxygen to the sputter
gas, because the optimum resistivity is at
or near zero oxygen partial pressure.
When appropriately doped, both ZnO
and In2O3 are useful transparent conductors. The cation coordination and consequently the crystal structures of these oxides
are, however, quite different, and their mutual solid solubility is low. Across a wide
range of ZnO-rich compositions, the In2O3
ZnO phase diagram3 shows that these two
oxides react to form a set of homologous
compounds enabling the two cations to preserve their individual tetragonal (wurtzite)
or octahedral (bixbyite) coordination.4 However, in a wide range of compositions, the
tendency of Zn and In oxides to preserve
their four and six (respectively) oxygen coordination has the effect of frustrating the
crystallization, resulting in amorphous materials with remarkable thermal stability.
The amorphous alloys of IZO (In2O3-10wt%
ZnO) would require diffusion-limited
phase separation for crystallization and,
as a consequence, a-IZO remains amorphous even when annealed to temperatures above 500C.

Crystal Chemistry of ITO

Crystalline indium oxide has the bixbyite
structure consisting of an 80-atom unit cell
with the Ia3 space group and a 1-nm lattice

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Transparent Conducting Oxides for Photovoltaics

parameter in an arrangement that is

based on the stacking of InO6 coordination
groups. The structure is closely related to
fluorite, which is a face-centered cubic array
of cations with all the tetrahedral interstitial positions occupied with anions. The
bixbyite structure is similar to fluorite except that the MO8 coordination units (oxygen position on the corners of a cube and
M located near the center of the cube) of
fluorite are replaced with units that have
oxygen missing from either the body or
the face diagonal. The removal of two oxygen ions from the metal-centered cube to
form the InO6 coordination units of bixbyite
forces the displacement of the cation from
the center of the cube. In this way, indium
is distributed in two nonequivalent sites
with one-fourth of the indium atoms positioned at the center of a trigonally distorted
oxygen octahedron (diagonally missing O).
The remaining three-fourths of the indium
atoms are positioned at the center of a more
distorted octahedron that forms with the removal of two oxygen atoms from the face of
the octahedron. These MO6 coordination
units are stacked such that one-fourth of
the oxygen ions are missing from each
{100} plane to form the complete bixbyite
structure.
A minimum in the thin-film resistivity
is found in the ITO system when the oxygen partial pressure during deposition is
optimized. This is because doping arises
from two sources, four-valent tin substituting for three-valent indium in the crystal
and the creation of doubly charged oxygen
vacancies. A more detailed understanding
of the point-defect doping mechanisms
has been developed over the years, starting with the work of Frank,5 to explain the
observation that even well below the solubility limit, tin is not fully activated in the
indium oxide lattice. This is due to an
oxygen-dependent competition between
substitutional Sn and Sn in the form of neutral oxide complexes that do not contribute
carriers.
Amorphous ITO that has been optimized
with respect to oxygen content during deposition has a characteristic carrier mobility
(40 cm2/V s) that is only slightly less
than that of crystalline films of the same
composition. This is in sharp contrast to
amorphous covalent semiconductors such
as Si, where carrier transport is severely
limited by the disorder of the amorphous
phase. In semiconducting oxides formed
from heavy-metal cations with (n 1)d10ns0
(n 4) electronic configurations, it appears
that the degenerate band conduction is
not band-tail limited. Hosono et al.6 note
that this oxide electronic behavior is a consequence of a conduction band that is primarily derived from spherically symmetric,

244

heavy-metal cation ns orbitals with large

radii. Overlapping ns cation orbitals leads
to the formation of well-defined conduction paths, irrespective of the bulk film
structure.

ZnO
Another important oxide used in PV window and display technology applications
is doped ZnO,7 which has been reported to
have a thin-film resistivity as low as 2.4
104 cm. Although the resistivity of ZnO
TCO thin films is not yet as good as the ITO
standard, it does offer the significant benefits of low cost relative to In-based systems
and high chemical and thermal stability. In
the undoped state, zinc oxide is highly resistive8 because, unlike In-based systems,
ZnO native point defects are not efficient
donors. However, reasonable impurity doping efficiencies can be achieved through
substitutional doping with Al, In, or Ga.
Most work to date has focused on Aldoped ZnO, but this dopant requires a
high degree of control over the oxygen potential in the sputter gas because of the
high reactivity of Al with oxygen.9 Gallium, however, is less reactive and has a
higher equilibrium oxidation potential,
which makes it a better choice for ZnO
doping applications. Furthermore, the
slightly smaller bond length of GaO
(1.92 ) compared with ZnO (1.97 ) also
offers the advantage of minimizing the
deformation of the ZnO lattice at high
substitutional gallium concentrations.
Fortunato reports low-resistivity Gadoped ZnO (45 104 cm) deposited
by rf sputtering at room temperature.10
This class of TCO material is of particular
interest for organic PV applications because
it can be readily grown into nanowires
and rods, which makes it ideal for infiltration of the polymeric absorption layer.

Tin Oxide (SnO2)

The TCO that is deposited in the largest
quantity (by area) and that may be of the
greatest economic importance is SnO2
doped with F or Sb. This material is used
widely for energy-efficient windows in architectural applications. The advantages
of SnO2 are that it is inexpensive both in
terms of raw materials and processing, because it can be easily deposited using chemical (rather than vapor-phase) methods such
as spray pyrolysis from the chlorides or
from organometallic precursors. It is receiving more attention for PVs, especially
for the heterojunction with intrinsic thin
layer (HIT) cells and related cells (such as
amorphous or microcrystalline Si) when
deposited from sources with low decomposition temperatures. F:SnO2 deposited
from SnCl2 precursors typically11 has the

cassiterite structure (similar to rutile) with

a direct gap of 4.0 eV and an indirect gap
of 2.6 eV. Films doped with fluorine show12
an increase in the gap to 4.1 eV and the best
resistivities on the order of 6 104 cm,
mobilities of 20 cm2/V s, and carrier concentrations of 58 1020 cm3; Sb-doped
films show similar properties. Conductivities for SnO2-based materials are not as
good for ITO, and process temperatures
for the best SnO2-based materials are
around 450C, limiting their use in many
PV technologies.

Use of TCOs in Current PV Device

Structures
The widely divergent PV technologies
listed in Table I and discussed next have
been chosen to illustrate that TCO materials with application-specific properties are
critical to the successful realization of each
of these PV technologies.

Si-Based Cells: The HIT Cell and

Amorphous/Microcrystalline Cells
The HIT cell, as developed by Sanyo13,14
and shown schematically in Figure 1, has
achieved record efficiencies for a simple cell
geometry. The structure consists of a crystalline silicon layer with an amorphous top
junction that is contacted by a TCO layer
and a metallic collection grid. This technology has achieved efficiencies of up to 19.2%
in commercial PV modules. The TCO in
this application must be deposited at low
temperature, must be highly conductive,
and must form a good contact with the
n+ amorphous Si layer. Typically ITO has
been employed, but the lowest possible
resistivity is achieved in ITO deposited at
elevated temperatures (200C),15 where
the thermal stability of the crystalline/
amorphous structure is limited. Consequently, there is interest in using amorphous IZO,1618 which can be deposited at
room temperature, but there will be a resistance penalty paid if this TCO is substituted for ITO.
Amorphous Si solar cells use TCOs as a
top contact layer, as shown in Figure 1b,
and in cells fabricated on glass substrates,
it is common to employ a second TCO layer
on the glass side. This buried TCO layer is
typically fluorine-doped SnO2 or crystalline ITO, which generally can withstand
relatively high postdeposition process
temperatures (350C) for short times
(10 min) in a mildly reducing ambient
without paying a performance penalty. The
specific needs for the TCOs used in these
applications are chemical and structural
stability, low cost, and the ability to be easily textured. The top layer in the a-Si nip
cell shown in Figure 1b is Ga-doped ZnO,
which is a material that can be deposited

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Transparent Conducting Oxides for Photovoltaics

Figure 1. Typical configuration for (a) the Sanyo heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT)
cell and (b) an amorphous Si nip cell. In (b), i stands for intrinsic, c is microcrystalline,
and a is amorphous.

at low temperature as a polycrystalline

film with strong texture-dependent surface
morphology. Surface morphology control
is increasingly important to improve light
trapping as the Si part of these cells becomes thinner.1922 The use of Ga-doped
ZnO as a top-side contact also has the added
benefit of reduced cost because it uses naturally abundant Zn rather than costly In.
Low-temperature deposition of ITO leads
to a highly planar amorphous thin film that
has a conductivity that is less than that of
crystalline ITO. Increased surface texturing can, in principle, be accomplished lithographically but crystalline ITO is difficult
to pattern because of its slow and highly
crystallographically anisotropic etch rate.
Amorphous ITO, in contrast, etches relatively rapidly in HCl-based etches. One
proposed approach to surface texturing is
to selectively crystallize amorphous ITO by
irradiation with a pulsed ultraviolet laser
light such as a KrF excimer laser (wavelength, 248 nm; pulse duration, 20 ns).
Direct micropatterning is achieved by illumination through a phase mask to selectively
crystallize the ITO, then forming a highly
textured surface by using the large difference in the etching rate between crystallized
and amorphous ITO. A demonstration of
this approach to surface patterning is shown
in Figure 2.

Copper Indium Gallium Selenide

(CIGS) and Cadmium Telluride
(CdTe) Thin-Film Solar Cells
Copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS)
and cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film

solar cells have demonstrated efficiencies

near 20% in the laboratory and have already begun to transition into commercial
production. A CIGS cell is shown in Figure 3. The requirements for the top TCO
contact in CIGS cells are both demanding
and unique to this technology. The defect
chemistry of CIGS is complex, and the active
layers in these cells are highly temperaturesensitive and susceptible to defect and
impurity diffusion. To maintain stoichiometry at the surface and to prevent point defect
creation caused by selective evaporative loss
at the surface, a stabilizing thin layer of CdS
is used to cap the CIGS and to form the
initial contact junction with the TCO layer
deposited above it. The CdS layer is normally deposited at room temperature in a
wet chemical bath process.2325 The TCO top
layer must likewise be applied at low temperature; even then, when doped ZnO is
deposited directly on the CdS cap, junction leakage currents are observed. Experience shows that these problems can be
avoided by depositing a thin layer of undoped TCO, then a thicker layer of doped
TCO, onto the CdS. Typically the TCO
used in these applications has been Aldoped ZnO.
The CdS/intrinsic-ZnO/Al:ZnO stack
in the CIGS cell is complicated to deposit
and currently requires both wet and physical vapor deposition (PVD) processes. It
is desirable, from a production viewpoint,
to have only one type of process to enhance in-line manufacturability. This could
be achieved by finding a replacement for
the CdS passivation layer or through the

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Figure 2. (top) Scanning electron

photomicrograph and (bottom) surface profile (in nm) of an ITO grating
fabricated by laser irradiation though
a phase mask and subsequent
acid-etching.32

use of a different TCO layer with better

junction-forming behavior. Recent work on
Ga:ZnO indicates that it may be more resistant to phase separation and more conductive at low temperatures. Clearly, the
use of a TCO that is based on sulfides or
selenides would greatly simplify the process because it would serve both as CIGS
passivation and as the top transparent electrode, but no suitable candidate materials
are yet available.
As shown in Figures 3c and 3d, the CdTebased solar cells have an inverted geometry relative to CIGS, and consequently the
demands on the TCO materials during
processing are more severe, since they are
exposed to a high-temperature CdTe deposition step. This means that the TCO must
be resistant to diffusion from both sides
during the high-temperature deposition of
the CdTe layer while remaining conductive and transparent. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has achieved
recent success by using ternary compound
TCOs. The approach has been to use
Cd2SnO4 as a low-resistance TCO layer but
use a thin layer of more resistive Zn2SnO4
at the interface to act as a diffusion barrier.
The Zn2SnO4 layer in this application is inadequate for use alone as a TCO because it
has proven difficult to dope, which results
in low carrier concentration and poor conductivity. The Cd2SnO4 ternary compound
TCO used in this application is a better TCO
than Zn2SnO4, but it suffers from poorer
diffusion barrier performance.

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Transparent Conducting Oxides for Photovoltaics

Figure 4. Schematic view of an

organic photovoltaic cell using a
nanostructured transparent conducting oxide (TCO) grown on a planar
TCO layer and intercalated with a
conjugated polymer.

(P3HT/PCBM) fullerene blend have

achieved nearly 3% PV efficiency. As indicated, there is a tremendous amount of
optimization needed for the TCO in this
application, and it is likely that existing
choices will not be adequate.

The Grtzel Cell: Dye-Sensitized TiO2

Figure 3. Actual photovoltaic structures: (a) Copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) and
(c) CdTe seen in cross section using SEM. (b), (d) Schematic illustrations of the structures in
(a) and (c), respectively.

Organic Photovoltaics
Organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices have
recently emerged as a natural extension of
the success of organic light-emitting diode
(OLED) technology. This approach to PVs is
of great interest because it could potentially
be implemented as a low-temperature, lowcost, atmospheric-pressure, large-area technology. Initial device efficiencies of nearly
5% have been obtained, and the improvements needed for higher efficiency have
been identified.2628 The needs of the TCO
in an OPV device include work-function
matching, stability on a deformable surface,
the ability to protect the OPV layer from the
atmosphere, and low resisitivity. These requirements make the organic transparent
conductors unusable for this application.
Inorganic TCOs, however, are suitable
and also offer the possibility of being

246

nanostructured into filaments (e.g., ZnO

nanowires) to maximize the organic/
inorganic interface and to minimize the
impact of the short diffusion lengths on
exciton dissociation and charge carrier collection. The ideal TCO for OPVs must also
have a high work function to optimize the
open-circuit potential and to facilitate
charge injection and also be readily wetted
by the organic layer. Finally, the ideal TCO
would have high mobility and high carrier
density when processed using a
nonvacuum, low-temperature-based deposition approach. No such TCO currently
exists, but a conceptual diagram for a
nanostructured TCO/polymer cell is
shown in Figure 4. Attempts to realize this
design with a non-optimized structure (in
terms of nanofiber spacing and properties) using ZnO nanorods and an organic

The Grtzel cell, illustrated in Figure 5

and described in more detail in the January 2005 issue of MRS Bulletin, is a new
approach to PV that uses nanoparticles of
dye-sensitized TiO2 to collect electrons from
electronhole pairs created by photon interaction at a dye/TiO2 interface. The holes
are transported via aqueous ionic mediators
for collection at TCO counter electrodes.
This technology depends functionally on
the use of optimized TCOs. Typically, lowcost F:SnO2 or ITO are used as the back
contact for the undoped, nanostructured
anatase TiO2. The transfer of holes to the
TCO front electrode is aided by a thin,
discontinuous coating of Pt particles that
speed the electron transfer kinetics. Like
the OPV devices described in the previous
section, rapid, facile injection of carriers
into a TCO with sufficient mobility is critical. This means that the interfacial properties of the oxide, chemical stability,
conductivity, and interface to the conventional TCO are all important. Recent work
on the doping of anatase to create a conductive TCO may present opportunities
for device optimization. In addition, there
is an increasing volume of work on TiO2
and other oxide nanostructures grown by
low-temperature solution processes, such
as the anodization of Ti metal to form TiO2
nanotubes.2931 This body of work has
opened the synthesis of oxide nanostructures as a large new area of TCO research
that may significantly impact Grtzel and
OPV devices.

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Transparent Conducting Oxides for Photovoltaics

TCOs used is critical to device performance.

Examination of current and future PV-TCO
materials performance leads to the conclusion that new efforts to develop
application-specific TCO materials and
processes are needed. As new device
structures evolve, it will be necessary to
expand the tool kit of TCO materials available to take advantage of very different
film properties and surface chemistries.

References

Figure 5. Schematic view of the Grtzel

cell, showing the use of a TCO from
contact and dye-sensitized
nanocrystalline TiO2 particles.

Summary
Current photovoltaic technologies, as
well as next-generation approaches to PVs,
will place specific demands on the transparent contact layers beyond transparency
and low resistivity. The mainstay of the
transparent conducting oxides used today
is based on indium tin oxide because, at
present, no other TCO delivers the same
performance and versatility. The high cost
of In as a raw material and process restraints, however, make this oxide system
less attractive for low-cost, high-volume PV
applications. Alternative TCO materials,
such as ZnO, appear to be promising for
some of these applications, but processing
and performance issues remain. In many
of the novel PV technologies currently
under development, such as organic
photovoltaics and Grtzel cells, control of
the morphology and surface chemistry of the

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