Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie

Furthermore, their buffer layer is usually made from cadmium sulphide, which means that highly toxic cadmium must be used in the manufacturing process. HZB researchers led by Professor Christian Herbert Fischer from the Institute for Heterogeneous Materials Systems have achieved significant improvements in this area, producing the various semiconductor layers using the ILGAR (ion layer gas reaction) method developed at the HZB. The buffer layers made in this way consist of indium sulphide or zinc sulphide/indium sulphide, which takes the place of the heavy metal cadmium in the thin-film solar cells. In addition, this method eliminates the need for an environmentally harmful deposition process. For their certified recordbreaking cells, the HZB researchers used light-absorbing layers made in standard industrial production processes. As a result, they have been able to produce solar cells that achieve certified efficiencies of more than 16.1 percent, clearly exceeding those with indium sulphide buffer layers produced by several other methods.

HZB/Red.