Investigation of Conversion Efficiency of n-ZnO/p-Si Heterojunction Device Produced by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD)

In this study, n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction was produced by growing polycrystalline Zinc Oxide (ZnO) thin films on p-type Si (100) substrate at 500 mu m thickness using Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) method. The crystalline and morphologic structure of ZnO thin film were analysed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) techniques. The photovoltaic (PV) property of n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction was investigated by using current-voltage (J-V) measurement under illumination at 70 mW/cm(2). The silver (Ag) metal thin film was deposited by PLD to make ohmic contacts to the n-ZnO/p-Si heterojunction structure. The barrier height and the ideality factor were calculated to be 0.51 eV and 12.37, respectively, at room temperature (RT). The largest values of open circuit voltage (V-oc) and short circuit current density (J(sc)) were about 250 mV and 1.63 mA/cm(2), respectively. The photoelectric conversion efficiency in the range of 0.12% have been achieved and presented in this paper. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.