Effect of Rapid Thermal Annealing of CIGS Thin Film as an Absorber Layer

The influence of rapid post-deposition thermal annealing (500 °C for 2 minutes) on the CIGS thin films of different thicknesses (0.4 to 1.0 m) has been investigated. The deposition of CIGS is carried out using the flash evaporation at the substrate temperature of 250 °C. The as-grown and annealed CIGS is characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, TEM, optical transmission, reflection, and electrical measurements. Lowering the thickness of CIGS absorber shows the remarkable influence on crystal structure, surface morphology, and composition of the overall film. Further improvement was observed by the rapid annealing process. Cu-rich composition was observed for annealed CIGS thin film having a thickness below 0.6 μm, while for 1.0 m thickness the composition is slightly Cu-poor and the compactly packed faceted grains observed. Optical band gap near to 1.05 eV and the electrical resistivity in the order of 104 Ω cm shows its future use as an absorber layer for CIGS solar cell. Furthermore, an attempt of making CIGS / CdS hetero-structure shows ideal behavior of the Schottky hetero-structure with the ideality factor of 1.5.