ANTIMONY SELENOSULPHIDE

In recent years, antimony binary compounds have emerged as promising semi-conductor materials for a variety of PV applications. Both antimony trisulphide and antimony selenide have high absorption coefficients in the visible range and show little degradation when subjected to wind or rain. The band gap can be tuned according to the S/Se ratio, with pure antimony selenide having a band gap of around 1.1 eV, and that of antimony sulphide being around 1.7 eV. As such, their band gaps are in the ideal range for applications in stacked tandem cells. Moreover, the wide band nature of antimony sulphide makes it an ideal candidate for the top layer in a tandem silicon structure. In the search for new PV device materials, antimony selenosulphide belongs to the family of thin-film materials that could rival traditional silicon devices in the not too distant future. The binary compound benefits from a less complex compositon and reduced secondary phase presence compared to its chalcogenide thin-film counterparts. This area of research perfectly illustrates our group's commitment to exploring new PV device materials and cell structures.