Thermal and Doping Effect on Sn/(n)ZnO Schottky Junction and Its Performance as a <Emphasis Type="Italic">PV</Emphasis> Effect

Thin film Sn/(n)ZnO Schottky junctions with different doping concentrations were prepared by vacuum evaporation. Different junction parameters such as ideality factor, barrier height, Richardson’s constant, short-circuit current, etc. were determined from I–V characteristics. These parameters were found to change significantly with variations of doping concentration and temperature. The structures showed the change of the PV effect, giving a fill factor of 0.42 (efficiency of 0.39 %) with an open-circuit voltage of 124mV and a short-circuit current density of 113 × 10⁻⁵ A ·cm⁻² for a doping concentration, N _d = 3.88 × 10¹⁵ cm ⁻³(2.74 % Al-doped ZnO). However, by increasing the doping concentration, the efficiency was found to increase by up to 4.54 % for doping concentration, N _d = 2.28 × 10¹⁷ cm ⁻³. The conversion efficiencies varied with temperature and were observed to have an overall improvement up to 343 K. Proper doping, annealing, and hydrogenation are necessary to reduce the series resistance so as to achieve an ideal and high efficiency PVconverter.