Copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) is a I-

III III or iii may refer to: Companies * Information International, Inc., a computer technology company * Innovative Interfaces, Inc., a library-software company * 3i, formerly Investors in Industry, a British investment company Other uses * Ins ...

- VI₂ semiconductor material composed of

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish ...

indium Indium is a chemical element with the symbol In and atomic number 49. Indium is the softest metal that is not an alkali metal. It is a silvery-white metal that resembles tin in appearance. It is a post-transition metal that makes up 0.21 par ...

gallium Gallium is a chemical element with the symbol Ga and atomic number 31. Discovered by French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875, Gallium is in group 13 of the periodic table and is similar to the other metals of the group ( alum ...

, and

selenium Selenium is a chemical element with the symbol Se and atomic number 34. It is a nonmetal (more rarely considered a metalloid) with properties that are intermediate between the elements above and below in the periodic table, sulfur and telluriu ...

. The material is a

solid solution A solid solution, a term popularly used for metals, is a homogenous mixture of two different kinds of atoms in solid state and have a single crystal structure. Many examples can be found in metallurgy, geology, and solid-state chemistry. The wor ...

of copper indium selenide (often abbreviated "CIS") and copper gallium selenide. It has a chemical formula of CuIn_1−''x''Ga_''x''Se₂, where the value of ''x'' can vary from 0 (pure copper indium selenide) to 1 (pure copper gallium selenide). CIGS is a

tetrahedral In geometry, a tetrahedron (plural: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertex corners. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the ...

ly bonded semiconductor, with the

chalcopyrite Chalcopyrite ( ) is a copper iron sulfide mineral and the most abundant copper ore mineral. It has the chemical formula CuFeS2 and crystallizes in the tetragonal system. It has a brassy to golden yellow color and a hardness of 3.5 to 4 on the Mo ...

crystal structure, and a

bandgap In solid-state physics, a band gap, also called an energy gap, is an energy range in a solid where no electronic states can exist. In graphs of the electronic band structure of solids, the band gap generally refers to the energy difference ( ...

varying continuously with ''x'' from about 1.0 eV (for copper indium selenide) to about 1.7 eV (for copper gallium selenide).

Structure

CIGS is a

ly bonded semiconductor, with the

crystal structure. Upon heating it transforms to the zincblende form and the transition temperature decreases from 1045 °C for ''x'' = 0 to 805 °C for ''x'' = 1.

Applications

It is best known as the material for CIGS solar cells a

thin-film technology A thin film is a layer of material ranging from fractions of a nanometer (monolayer) to several micrometers in thickness. The controlled synthesis of materials as thin films (a process referred to as deposition) is a fundamental step in many ap ...

used in the

photovoltaic Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially ...

industry. In this role, CIGS has the advantage of being able to be deposited on flexible substrate materials, producing highly flexible, lightweight

solar panel A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module, PV panel or solar panel is an assembly of photovoltaic solar cells mounted in a (usually rectangular) frame, and a neatly organised collection of PV panels is called a pho ...

s. Improvements in efficiency have made CIGS an established technology among alternative cell materials.

References

{{Selenides Semiconductor materials Copper(I) compounds Indium compounds Gallium compounds Selenides Renewable energy Dichalcogenides

Structure

Applications

See also

References