An experimental and theoretical study into NaSbS2 as an emerging solar absorber

W. W. Winnie Leung; Christopher N. Savory; Robert G. Palgrave; David O. Scanlon

doi:10.1039/c8tc06284f

An experimental and theoretical study into NaSbS₂ as an emerging solar absorber

W. W. Winnie Leung, Christopher N. Savory, Robert G. Palgrave, David O. Scanlon^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Chemistry

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

As photovoltaics have grown to become one of the dominant renewable energy generating technologies, attention has fallen upon thin-film materials as a route to lightweight, flexible and portable solar cells. NaSbS₂ has recently been proposed as a non-toxic, earth abundant solar absorber for thin-film cells. In this study, we use a combined theoretical and experimental approach to characterize and assess the electronic and optical properties of NaSbS₂ as an emerging solar absorber. Our results, utilising two theoretical efficiency metrics, demonstrate that NaSbS₂ may be limited for use in single-junction cells by a forbidden band gap and slow absorption onset. Other features of its electronic structure, however, indicate that the material may still be promising in thermoelectric applications.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2059-2067
Number of pages	9
Journal	Journal of Materials Chemistry C
Volume	7
Issue number	7
Early online date	21 Jan 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1039/c8tc06284f
Publication status	Published - 21 Feb 2019

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgments:
WWL and CNS acknowledge the Department of Chemistry at UCL for the provision of DTA studentships. DOS acknowledges support from the SUPERSOLAR SolarEnergy Hub (EP/J017361/1) for the provision of a flexible funding call award and membership of the Materials Design Network. XPS data collection was performed at the EPSRC National Facility for XPS (‘HarwellXPS’) under contract No. PR16195. This work made use of the ARCHER UK National Supercomputing Service (http://www.archer.ac.uk), via our membership of the UK's HEC Materials Chemistry Consortium, which is funded by EPSRC (EP/L000202) in addition to the UCL Grace (Grace@UCL) and Legion (Legion@UCL) HPC Facilities. The authors are extremely grateful to Prof. T. Kirchartz for the provision of scripts allowing the calculation of the Blank et al. selection metric.

Keywords

Ternary
photovoltaic
thermoelectric
antimony
chalcogenides

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1039/c8tc06284fLicence: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC BY)

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Cite this

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abstract = "As photovoltaics have grown to become one of the dominant renewable energy generating technologies, attention has fallen upon thin-film materials as a route to lightweight, flexible and portable solar cells. NaSbS2 has recently been proposed as a non-toxic, earth abundant solar absorber for thin-film cells. In this study, we use a combined theoretical and experimental approach to characterize and assess the electronic and optical properties of NaSbS2 as an emerging solar absorber. Our results, utilising two theoretical efficiency metrics, demonstrate that NaSbS2 may be limited for use in single-junction cells by a forbidden band gap and slow absorption onset. Other features of its electronic structure, however, indicate that the material may still be promising in thermoelectric applications.",

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An experimental and theoretical study into NaSbS2 as an emerging solar absorber