Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The chemical and electronic structure of high efficiency chalcopyrite thin film solar cell absorbers significantly differs between the surface and the bulk. While it is widely accepted that the absorber surface exhibits a Cu-poor surface phase with increased band gap (Eg), a direct access to the crucial information of the depth-dependency of Eg is still missing. In this paper, we demonstrate that a combination of x-ray emission and absorption spectroscopy allows a determination of Eg in the surface-near bulk and thus complements the established surface- and bulk-sensitive techniques of Eg determination. As an example, we discuss the determination of Eg for a Cu(In,Ga)Se2 absorber [(1.52 +- 0.20) eV].