Abstract
CdTe solar cells were produced using metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD), which employed a (Zn,Al)S (AZS) high resistant transparent (HRT) layer at the transparent conducting oxide (TCO)/Cd(Zn)S emitter interface, to enable the higher annealing temperature of 440 °C to be employed in the chlorine heat treatment (CHT) process. The AZS HRT remained intact with conformal coverage over the TCO after performing the high CHT annealing, confirmed by cross-section scanning transmission electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (STEM-EDX) characterisation, which also revealed the Cd(Zn)S emitter layer having been consumed by the CdTe absorber via interdiffusion. The more aggressive CHT resulted in large CdTe grains. The combination of AZS HRT and aggressive CHT increased open circuit voltage (Voc) and improved solar cell performance.
Highlights
The rapid rise in photovoltaic (PV) solar energy over the past decade has been largely driven by the supply of crystalline silicon PV modules
The Zn(Al)S (AZS) layer was either 50 nm or 100 nm, as detailed further in this report, and was deposited as the first layer on NSG TEC10 substrates, which consisted of fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) on soda-lime glass produced by NSG Pilkington
cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells are stable in air but can suffer from issues associated with the acceptor dopant, which is typically copper (Cu)
Summary
The rapid rise in photovoltaic (PV) solar energy over the past decade has been largely driven by the supply of crystalline silicon PV modules. Alongside the exponential growth of silicon PV, there has been a similar growth in thin film PV, but this started from a much lower base which has left thin film PV with a total market share of less than 10% [2] This mainly comprises thin film cadmium telluride (CdTe) and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) with the larger share attributed to. CdTe. Progressive improvements in the solar conversion efficiency of thin film PV have narrowed the gap with crystalline silicon, which has a world best cell efficiency of 26.7%, with current world record CdTe solar cells having 22.1% efficiency under standard air mass conditions (AM1.5) [3]. This is sometimes buffered with a high-resistance transparent layer (HRT)
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