Galvanostatically deposited Cd<inf>0.7</inf>Fe<inf>0.3</inf>Se electrode for solar cell application

Abstract

Thin films of Cd <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.7</sub> Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.3</sub> Se have been prepared on stainless steel and fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) coated glass substrates using electrodeposition technique. Double distilled water containing precursors of Cd, Fe and Se are used with ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid (EDTA) disodium salt as a complexing agent to obtain good quality deposits by controlling the rate of reactions. The different preparative parameters like concentration of bath, deposition time, pH of the bath and Fe content in the bath have been optimized by photoelectrochemical (PEC) technique in order to get good quality thin films. Different techniques have been used to characterize electrodeposited Cd <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.7</sub> Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.3</sub> Se thin films. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis reveals that the films Cd <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.7</sub> Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.3</sub> Se are polycrystalline in nature with crystallite size of 282 Å for the films deposited with optimized preparative parameters. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) study reveals that all grains uniformly distributed over the surface of stainless steel substrate indicates well defined growth of polycrystalline Cd <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.7</sub> Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.3</sub> Se material. Optical absorption shows the direct band gap energy of 1.84 eV. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) solar cell study shows the films of Cd <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.7</sub> Fe <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0.3</sub> Se are more photosensitive.