RE-Doped SnO2 as Functional Oxides For Photovoltaics

Photon conversion using lanthanide doped materials with high performances is a great challenging topic and of particular interest for photovoltaics. This work aims at functionalizing transparent conductive oxide (TCO) materials with rare earth (RE) elements for photons conversion purpose without harm to transparency, nor carriers transport properties of the TCO. The spectral conversion targeted in this thesis is of type ¿shifting¿, in other words, converting high energy UV photons into low energy visible and/or NIR photons useful to solar cells. Here we investigated the doping process of SnO2 as a host material in which rare earths such as Nd, Tb, Pr, and Yb were inserted. The first part concerns the study of structural and optical properties of RE-doped SnO2 nanoparticles (powders). The latest were synthesised by two chemical methods: co-precipitation and sol-gel. The second part of this work reports on the properties of RE-doped SnOx thin films produced by magnetron sputtering technique. The final chapter demonstrates that application of the RE-doped SnO2 conversion layers to CIGS and Si based solar cells offers significant improvement in their photovoltaic properties.