Flexibility of Room-Temperature-Synthesized Amorphous CdO-In2O3 Alloy Films and Their Application as Transparent Conductors in Solar Cells

Due to their low-temperature deposition, high mobility (>10 cm2/V·s), and electrical conductivity, amorphous ionic oxide semiconductors (AIOSs) have received much attention for their applications in flexible and/or organic electro-optical devices. Here, we report on a study of the flexibility of CdO-In2O3 alloy thin films, deposited on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate by radio frequency magnetron sputtering at room temperature. Cd1–xInxO1+δ alloys with the composition of x > 0.6 are amorphous, exhibiting a high electron mobility of 40–50 cm2/V·s, a low resistivity of ∼3 × 10–4 Ω·cm, and high transmittance over a wide spectral window of 350 to >1600 nm. The flexibility of both crystalline and amorphous Cd1–xInxO1+δ films on the PET substrate was investigated by measuring their electrical resistivity after both compressive and tensile bending with a range of bending radii and repeated bending cycles. Under both compressive and tensile bending with Rb = 16.5 mm, no significant degradation was observed for both the crystalline and amorphous films up to 300 bending cycles. For a smaller bending radius, the amorphous film shows much less electrical degradation than the crystalline films under compressive bending due to less film delamination at the bending sites. On the other hand, for a small bending radius (<16 mm), both crystalline and amorphous films degrade after repeated tensile bending, most likely due to the development of microcracks in the films. To demonstrate the application of amorphous Cd1–xInxO1+δ alloy in photovoltaics, we fabricated perovskite and bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells (OSCs) on glass and flexible PET utilizing amorphous Cd1–xInxO1+δ layers as transparent electrodes. The organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite solar cells (PSCs) exhibit a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of ∼11 to 12% under both front and back illumination, demonstrating good bifacial performance with bifaciality factor >90%. The OSCs fabricated on an amorphous Cd1–xInxO1+δ-coated flexible PET substrate achieve a promising PCE of 12.06%. Our results strongly suggest the technological potentials of amorphous Cd1–xInxO1+δ as a reliable and effective transparent conducting material for flexible and organic optoelectronic devices.