The Development Of The Heterojunction Industry May Drive Up Demand For Tungsten

Tungsten is a typical transition metal element, which is located in the VIB group of the sixth period of the periodic table. It is a silver-white shiny solid with a high melting point, high density, high hardness, high-temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, and low It is widely used in metallurgy, construction, transportation, electronics, chemical industry, military industry, aerospace, science and technology, and other fields. Specifically, tungsten can not only manufacture drill bits, rocket nozzles, armor-piercing bullets, carbide blades, superhard molds, wire drawing dies, and other products but also can be used to modify some chemical materials, such as indium oxide.

Indium oxide is a new n-type transparent semiconductor functional material with a wide band gap, small resistivity, high catalytic activity, fast electron mobility, and high visible light transmittance. , is widely used in the field of optoelectronics. However, with the continuous development of the optoelectronic industry in recent years, how to improve the performance of In2O3 has become the direction of the majority of researchers. The incorporation of high-valence metal ions such as tungsten ions can improve the overall performance of In2O3 materials to a certain extent.

Compared with pure indium oxide, tungsten-doped indium oxide (IWO, or indium oxide-doped tungsten oxide) has higher carrier concentration, carrier mobility, and visible light transmittance, so it is more suitable for heterojunction cells. (HJT cells) transparent conductive oxide (TCO) thin films to effectively improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency of heterojunction cells.

A heterojunction cell is a special PN junction, which is formed by amorphous silicon and crystalline silicon materials. It is a film of amorphous silicon deposited on crystalline silicon. One of the important development directions of batteries. As one of the important components of HJT cells, the quality of TCO films directly affects the photoelectric conversion performance of HJT cells. High-performance TCO thin films - tungsten-doped indium oxide thin films can be prepared by DC magnetron sputtering technology. Sputtering coating technology refers to the technology in which charged particles bombard the target surface when working in a vacuum state, causing the bombarded particles to deposit on the substrate to form a thin film. It is reported that in the past two years, leading companies in the photovoltaic industry have entered the heterojunction industry chain. Therefore, driven by the gradual development of the heterojunction industry, the demand for tungsten is expected to increase.