Investigation of Nickel Phthalocyanine Thin Films for Solar Cell Applications

Ni-Phthalocyanine thin films were thermally evaporated with different substrate temperatures (300 - 450) K on (silicon wafer, glass) substrates. The chemical bonds of NiPc powder were investigated by FTIR spectrum, which introduce good information for NiPc bonds and their locations. The optical properties have been studied by UV-Visible, and Photoluminescence (PL) Spectra. The NiPc thin films have direct gap for all samples. The values of energy gap which is calculated by PL spectra are lower than those calculated by Tauc equation. It is found there are three activation energies, the mobility and concentration of carriers have been measured and, the NiPc films are p-type. P-NiPc/n-Si HJ solar cell was fabricated at substrates temperatures (300, 400) K. From I-V and C-V characteristic, abrupt junction has been found, photovoltaic characteristics have been observed with Voc of (0.335 - 0.415) V, and Isc of (2.77 - 4.26) μA, and the efficiency of (3.08 - 5.03)% at room temperature and substrate temperature (300, 400 K) and under illumination of 55 mW/cm2 using Halogen lamp. Ideality factors of the junction increase from (0.61 - 0.73) and barrier height increases from 2.53 eV to 3.69 eV while shunt resistance decreases from 3.76 KΩ to 2.59 KΩ and series resistance decreases slightly from 0.24 KΩ to 0.23 KΩ. The fill factor decreases from 0.46 to 0.4 with the increase of substrate temperature.