Thin films of CdS with different nominal ratios c (thiourea)/c (CdCl 2 ) have been grown by conventional chemical bath deposition on an InP substrate, in order to study the influence of each film on the surface passivation of the InP sample. The values of the surface recombination velocity were determined by the photoacoustic technique (PA) and photoluminescence. Atomic force microscopy measurements were also used to correlate the results obtained from the PA measurements.
The II-IV semiconductor compound, CdTe, has suitable electrical and optical properties as photovoltaic and high-energy radiation sensor material. As an absorber material for thinfilm-based solar cells, CdTe holds the potentiality to fabricate high-efficiency solar cells by means of low-cost technologies. This chapter presents a comprehensive review on the CdTe thin-film deposition techniques as well as on the several configurations for the solar cell structures that have led the best efficiency conversion. Current CdTe thin-film deposition techniques include sputtering, close spaced vapor transport (CSVT), chemical spray pyrolysis, and electrodeposition. These techniques have easily been adapted to deposit polycrystalline CdTe films on various flexible and rigid substrates. In regard to the device structure configuration, a variety of partner materials (transparent contact, optical window, buffer layer) were tested, and CdTe film thickness was varied to develop opaque and semitransparent devices by some techniques mentioned above. In this chapter, we will discuss about each technique used for CdTe thin-film deposition as well as its advantages and disadvantages.
The deposition of a high resistivity transparent (HRT) oxide between a transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and the window CdS has demonstrated the improvement of performance of CdS/CdTe solar cells, fabricated in the superstrate-configuration. In this work the influence of the pneumatic spray pyrolysis (PSP) and magnetron sputtering techniques on the properties TCO/SnO2/CdS structure through the deposition of the intermediate SnO2 between the commercial conducting glass and CdS window is presented by means of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS), and contact resistance, calculated using transmission line method (TLM), in order to reduce the front contact resistance in devices with superstrate-configuration. The results of this work are applicable to other solar cells in the same configuration as the recent solar cells based on the compound Sb2Se3, where the use of this type of HRT has not been studied.
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