Effects of CdCl2 treatment on deep levels in CdTe and their implications on thin film solar cells: a comprehensive photoluminescence study

This work is aimed at studying defect level distributions in the bandgap of CdTe thin films, used for solar cell development. In particular, the effects of CdCl2 treatment on the defect levels are the main objectives of this research. Four different nearly optimised CdTe thin films were electroplated using three different Cd-precursors (CdSO4, Cd(NO3)(2) and CdCl2), and bulk CdTe wafers purchased from industry were studied using low temperature photoluminescence. The finger prints of defects, 0.55 eV below the conduction band down to the valence band edge were investigated. In all of the CdTe layers, four electron trap levels were observed with varying intensities but at very similar energy positions, indicating that the origin of these defects are mainly from native defects. CdCl2 treatment and annealing eliminates two defect levels completely and the mid-gap recombination centres are reduced drastically by this processing step. The optical bandgap of all four as-deposited CdTe layers is similar to 1.50 eV, and reduces to similar to 1.47 eV after CdCl2 treatment. The material grown using the CdCl2 precursor seems to produce CdTe material with the cleanest bandgap, most probably due to the built-in CdCl2 treatment while growing the material.