Recent development in earth-abundant kesterite materials and their applications

Abstract

Kesterite Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) has attracted attention as an earth-abundant alternative to commercially successful CIGS solar cells. CZTS exhibits decent optoelectrical properties while having excellent stability on top of being an earth-abundant, low-cost and non-toxic material. Therefore, in recent years, there has been a significant research effort to develop CZTS-based devices. The efficiency of CZTS solar cells reached 12.6% in 2013, and this was a remarkable achievement at the time. However, the efficiency of these devices has been stagnant since then while emerging technologies, most notably perovskite solar cells, keep breaking record after record. Currently, CZTS research focuses on discovering the secrets of material properties that hinder the efficiency of CZTS solar cells while branching out to develop alternative applications for this material. In this review, we summarize the interesting properties of CZTS as well as its promising applications, which include thin-film solar cells, charge-transfer layers in perovskite solar cells, and photoelectrochemical water splitting while briefly commenting on its other possible applications.