Journal
IEEE JOURNAL OF PHOTOVOLTAICS
Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages 685-689Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/JPHOTOV.2019.2955313
Keywords
Selenium; II-VI semiconductor materials; Cadmium compounds; Chlorine; Grain boundaries; Ions; Alloying; CdTe; secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS); solar energy
Funding
- EPSRC CDT in New and Sustainable Photovoltaics
- RCUK through the EPSRC SUPERGEN SuperSolar Hub [EP/J017361/1]
- NSF AIR programme
- NSF I/UCRC programme
- DOE SIPS programme
- NSF [1540007]
- NSF PFI:AIR-RA programme [1538733]
- DOE SIPS award [DE-EE0008177]
- EPSRC [M018237/1]
- EPSRC [EP/J017361/1] Funding Source: UKRI
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Thin-film solar modules based on cadmium telluride (CdTe) technology currently produce the world's lowest cost solar electricity. However, the best CdTe modules now contain a cadmium selenium telluride (CST) alloy at the front of the absorber layer. Despite this, research characterizing the behavior of selenium in alloyed CdTe devices is currently very limited. Here we employ advanced secondary ion mass spectrometry measurements to map the three-dimensional distribution of selenium in a graded CST/CdTe device for the first time. We find significant interdiffusion of selenium between the CST and CdTe layers in the cell, primarily out of the CST grain boundaries and up into the CdTe grain boundaries and grain fringes above. This results in significant lateral variations in selenium concentrations across grains and hence also lateral fields, which we estimate using the measured selenium concentrations.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available