Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
Volume 112, Issue 15, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.156103
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Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Foundational Program to Advance Cell Efficiency (F-PACE)
- Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Materials Science and Engineering Division
- DOE Grant [DE-FG02-09R46554]
- UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council through the UK National Facility for Aberration-Corrected STEM (SuperSTEM)
- ORNL's Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS)
- DOE-BES
- DOE Office of Science [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- Ohio Research Scholar Program (ORSP)
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When CdTe solar cells are doped with Cl, the grain boundaries no longer act as recombination centers but actively contribute to carrier collection efficiency. The physical origin of this remarkable effect has been determined through a combination of aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, and first-principles theory. Cl substitutes for a large proportion of the Te atoms within a few unit cells of the grain boundaries. Density functional calculations reveal the mechanism, and further indicate the grain boundaries are inverted to n type, establishing local p-n junctions which assist electron-hole pair separation. The mechanism is electrostatic, and hence independent of the geometry of the boundary, thereby explaining the universally high collection efficiency of Cl-doped CdTe solar cells.
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