Discovery of the Zintl-phosphide BaCd2P2 as a long carrier lifetime and stable solar absorber
Publication Type
Original research
Authors

Thin-film photovoltaics (PV) offers a path to decarbonize global energy production. Unfortunately, existing thin-film solar absorbers have major issues associated with either elemental abundance, stability, or performance. Entirely new and disruptive materials platforms are rarely discovered, and their search is traditionally slow and serendipitous. Here, we report a first-principles high-throughput (HT) computational screening for new solar absorbers among 40,000 known inorganic materials. Next to band gap and carrier effective masses, we also use computed intrinsic defects as they can limit the carrier lifetime. We identify the Zintl-phosphide BaCd2P2 as a potential high-efficiency solar absorber. Follow-up experiments confirm the promises of BaCd2P2, highlighting an optimal band gap, bright photoluminescence (PL), and long carrier lifetime, even in unoptimized powder samples. Importantly, BaCd2P2 contains

Journal
Title
Joule
Publisher
Elsevier
Publisher Country
Netherlands
Indexing
Thomson Reuters
Impact Factor
38.6
Publication Type
Both (Printed and Online)
Volume
8
Year
2024
Pages
1412-1429