(167d) Low-Voltage Electrophoretic Deposition of All-Inorganic CZTS Nanocrystals for Fabrication of Thin Films

Colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) have been proposed as the building blocks of prospective next-generation solar cells, due in-part to significantly reduced fabrication costs through their solution processability. However, fabrication of conductive, well-adhered films via low-waste, high-throughput methods has not been realized. Electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is one scalable method proposed for fabricating solution-processed absorbing layers for solar cells. In this study, we deposit films through low-voltage EPD of all-inorganic semiconductor NCs. In order to probe the transport processes and electrochemical reactions that occur during EPD, light scattering, absorbance spectroscopy, and electric measurements were used with special attention to understand the temporally separate current-driven processes that occur during an EPD run. Through choice of NC-ligand-solvent combinations and reactor design, improvements in the morphology and electronic properties of deposited films are realized. These insights are applied to EPD in both batch and continuous flow reactors.