CdTe thin film solar cells prepared by a low-temperature deposition method

Abstract

Low-temperature vacuum deposition instead of the commonly used vacuum deposition at high substrate temperatures has been applied to prepare high efficiency (CdS/CdTe) solar cells. CdS and CdTe thin films have been subsequently deposited on SnO 2/Corning 7059 glass substrates and examined by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) techniques. It has been found that CdTe and CdS films deposited at low substrate temperature (218 K) have very similar grain sizes and surface morphology, necessary for high efficiency photovoltaic performance of the resultant device structures. Particularly, the obtained solar cells have shown efficiencies of more than 14%. The applied preparation method can be regarded as promising for high efficiency CdTe-based solar cell fabrication. © 2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.