Influence of grain boundaries on the figure of merit of undoped and Al, In, Sn doped ZnO thin films for photovoltaic applications

Abstract Electron transport in ZnO doped with 3 at.% Sn, In, and Al processed using the sol–gel dip coating technique was investigated to obtain the correlation between the type of dopant and its effect on electrical and optical properties. A detailed analysis in terms of grain boundary transport was used to correlate the values of the figure of merit with the mean potential barrier height. We found that Al dopant leads to form the lowest mean barrier height among other dopants, which remarkably improves the figure of merit.

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