The SBO project weTCOat is all about deposition of Transparent Conductive Oxide (TCO) coatings using wet deposition technologies, more specifically for photovoltaic applications.

The entire focus of the projects is on solution deposition of Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) and Aluminium doped Zinc Oxide (AZO) for inorganic and organic thin film solar cells.

The objectives of the project are:

• Obtain TCO thin  films by wet processing: thickness between 30 and 1000 nanometer.
  • As front electrodes on glass and also on CIGS stacks.
  • With equal properties as currently obtained by vacuum deposition techniques: more than 85% transparency, conductivity higher than 1000 S/cm, etc.

Challenges:

• Preparation of dense, contamination-free layers starting from TCO precursor solutions.
• Compatibility of deposition and annealing of a printed TCO layer on top of an underlying Cadmium Sulfide (CdS) or CIGS layer.