4.7 Article

Tailoring the CdS/CdSe/CdTe multilayer structure for optimization of photovoltaic device performance guided by mapping spectroscopic ellipsometry

Journal

SOLAR ENERGY MATERIALS AND SOLAR CELLS
Volume 221, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.solmat.2020.110907

Keywords

CdTe solar cells; CdS/CdSe effective thicknesses; Mapping spectroscopic ellipsometry

Funding

  1. National Science Foundation (NSF) [1711534]
  2. U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Space Vehicles Directorate [FA945319-C-1002]
  3. Ministry of Higher Education, Baghdad, Iraq
  4. Div Of Electrical, Commun & Cyber Sys
  5. Directorate For Engineering [1711534] Funding Source: National Science Foundation

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Thin film CdTe superstrate solar cells are fabricated by sputtering starting from CdS/CdSe front layers deposited on transparent conductor coated glass. The performance of these devices is sensitive to fabrication details including temperature-time profile and is optimized by correlating cell parameters with effective thicknesses determined through mapping spectroscopic ellipsometry.
Thin film CdTe superstrate solar cells have been fabricated by sputtering starting from CdS/CdSe front layers deposited on transparent conductor coated glass. The performance of such devices is sensitive to the fabrication details including the temperature-time profile, which leads to CdSe/CdTe interdiffusion and formation of a CdTe1-xSex bandgap-graded absorber. Mapping spectroscopic ellipsometry (M-SE) has been applied to the CdS and CdSe thin films for process calibration, which involves determining the deposition rate in terms of effective thickness (volume/area) versus spatial position on the sample. The goal is to optimize the performance of the devices by correlating cell parameters with these two effective thicknesses. Intended variations in the thicknesses along with unintended spatial non-uniformities enable coarse and fine-scale optimization, respectively. Using these methods, the highest performance solar cells from the CdS/CdSe/CdTe structure are obtained with 13 nm CdS and 100 nm CdSe. An increase in the CdS thickness above 13 nm leads to a decrease in open-circuit voltage and fill-factor attributed to the formation of a CdSe1-zSz interdiffusion region with z approaching 0.5, where the alloy electronic properties are likely to suffer. Our results demonstrate that M-SE, exploited in conjunction with deposition non-uniformities, serve as a viable approach for process optimization of complex solar cell structures.

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