Effects of deposition time and post-deposition annealing on the physical and chemical properties of electrodeposited CdS thin films for solar cell application

Echendu, O. K.; Mbamara, U. S.; Okeoma, Kelechukwu B.; Iroegbu, Chinedu; Madu, C. A.; Ndukwe, IC; Dharmadasa, I. M.

doi:10.1007/s10854-016-5095-z

Cited by 6 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The only visible peaks are those from the underlying ITO substrate. We attribute this amorphous nature to the effect of the ITO substrate used, as we had previously obtained very crystalline CdS on FTO substrate under the same conditions used in the present work [17,30]. The effect of the presence of Ga in the electrolyte in the form of GaCl 3 is very evident in the appearance of clearly defined diffraction peaks for all the films with Ga concentration from 0.003 M to 0.012 M. Therefore, the presence of Ga promotes the electrocrystallization of CdS by the incorporation of Ga into the crystal lattice of CdS, with the cubic CdS phase taking dominance over the hexagonal phase in the as-deposited form.…”

Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 52%

“…1, the possible cathodic deposition potentials for CdS was identified to lie between 1300 mV and 1700 mV. However, because we had earlier established the cathodic deposition potential of 1450 mV for this electrolytic bath using fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) as substrate [17,30], we decided to settle for 1450 mV (which lies in the neighborhood of the intersection of the forward and reverse sweeps in fig. 1) as the preferred deposition potential in this present work, without further experimentation.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The few available reports have employed mainly Ga(NO 3 ) 3 [23 -25], elemental Ga and Ga 2 O 3 [26]. Since we had previously established and reported the electrodeposition of CdS using CdCl 2 as Cd precursor [17,30], we therefore decided to use GaCl 3 as source of Ga doping without introducing additional elements into the deposition electrolyte other than those from the Cd and S precursors. Third, ITO has not been employed as substrate for this purpose.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ga doping of nanocrystalline CdS thin films by electrodeposition method for solar cell application: the influence of dopant precursor concentration

Echendu

Werta

Dejene

et al. 2019

J Mater Sci: Mater Electron

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Section: Methodssupporting

confidence: 52%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ga doping of nanocrystalline CdS thin films by electrodeposition method for solar cell application: the influence of dopant precursor concentration

Echendu

Werta

Dejene

et al. 2019

J Mater Sci: Mater Electron

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“…This is usually carried out in an aqueous electrolyte containing cadmium source and sulphur source. Cadmium source is usually an aqueous solution of CdCl 2 , and the sulphur source can be Na 2 S 2 O 3 [23,24], NH 4 S 2 O 3 [25] or NH 2 CSNH 2 [26,27]. Both 3-electrode and 2-electrode systems have been used to deposit CdS layers on glass/conducting glass (CG) substrates which is the starting base for development of the CdS/CdTe solar cell.…”

Section: Growth Of Cds By Electrodepositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unravelling complex nature of CdS/CdTe based thin film solar cells

Dharmadasa

Ojo

2017

J Mater Sci: Mater Electron

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and high-temperature growth techniques. The wide bandgap (E g = 2.42 eV) window material, CdS was mainly grown by chemical bath deposition (CBD) and narrow bandgap (E g = 1.45 eV) absorber material, CdTe was grown by over 14 different methods [1]. High efficiencies were achieved by the combination of CdS with CdTe layers grown by high temperature growth methods such as closed space sublimation (CSS) or close spaced vapour transport (CSVT) for a long period. Depending on the growth technique, material growth mechanisms, micro-structure and impurity inclusions are going to vary. Although there are a large number of publications reporting material characterisation, deep understanding is required on material issues such as defects and doping concentrations.The next area needing deeper understanding is the postgrowth chemical and heat treatment. The devices fabricated using as-made CdTe materials show poor device performance in the range ~(0-6)% depending on the growth technique used. However, from 1976 [2], the researchers were aware of the drastic improvement of the device performance after heat treatment around 450 °C in air, in the presence of CdCl 2 . This was known as "CdCl 2 treatment" and device efficiencies improved to mid-teens achieving good solar cell performance. Although there were tremendous efforts to explore the complexity of changes during this treatment, full understanding has not yet been achieved.The third main area of complexity comes from the CdTe/electrical back contact formation. It is essential to clean the CdTe surface after CdCl 2 treatment, and researchers were using different chemicals to clean the surface prior to metallisation. Various electrical contacts have been used to complete the devices and varying results have been reported in the literature [3]. Initial high efficiency, reproducibility and yield, stability and lifetime are main features of fully fabricated devices to establish. Some of these Abstract Thin film solar cells based on CdS/CdTe hetero-structure has shown a drastic improvement changing from 16.5 to 22.1% efficiency during a short period of time from ~2013 to ~2016. This has happened in the industrial environment and the open research in this field has stagnated over a period of two decades prior to ~2013. Most of the issues of this hetero-structure were not clear to the photovoltaic (PV) community and research efforts should be directed to unravel its complex nature. Issues related to materials, post-growth treatment, chemical etching prior to metallisation and associated device physics are the main areas needing deeper understanding in order to further develop this device. After a comprehensive research programme in both academia and in industry on these materials, surfaces and interfaces and fully fabricated devices over a period of over three decades by the main author, the current knowledge as understood today, on all above mentioned complex issues are presented in this paper. Full understanding of this structure will enable PV developers to further improve the ...

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“…The PbS is mainly used as an infrared detector in various fields has been used mainly as an infra-red detector in another diverse field [11][12][13][14][15]. On the other hand, the CdS material shows a direct band gap between 2.42 and 2.53 eV [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. The CdS material was used as a pigment as well as for solar cells optical window; cadmium sulfide is a semiconductor II-VI type which is mainly useful in optoelectronic devices and some researchers reported that it has low conductivity of 10.8 (Ω cm) −1 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthesis of Thin Films of Sulfides of Cadmium, Lead and Copper by Chemical Bath Deposition

Hernandez¹,

Castillo²

2017

Thin Film Processes - Artifacts on Surface Phenomena and Technological Facets

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The goal of this chapter is to present three kind of thin films for the materials, done by Chemical Bath Deposition technique, the materials are CdS, PbS and CuS. The characterization has been diversified, but consisting mainly X-ray Diffraction (XRD) giving hexagonal, cubic and amorphous structures of CdS, PbS and CuS respectively. The Raman dispersion let to found the characteristics peaks of vibration, one for the CdS located on 300.7 cm −1 , three for PbS and two more for the CuS. We use X-rays Photoelectron Spectroscopy to formalize the chemical composition analysis, from this analysis we could to proof the high purity of the chemical bath deposition method in the materials preparation. We used UV-Vis Spectroscopy to determine simple optical responses, getting the biggest transmittances of 72% for CdS, 45% for PbS, and 80% for CuS, and direct energy band gaps of 2.47 eV for CdS, 1.78 eV for CuS as ground and with thermic annealing 2.45 eV which is believed result of amorphous to crystalline morphology changes, the indirect bandgap 0.94 eV is measured too. The AFM given information about the surface morphology and roughness, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) micrography shows the polycrystallinity nature of the CuS including the smooth.

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Effects of deposition time and post-deposition annealing on the physical and chemical properties of electrodeposited CdS thin films for solar cell application

Cited by 6 publications

References 28 publications

Ga doping of nanocrystalline CdS thin films by electrodeposition method for solar cell application: the influence of dopant precursor concentration

Ga doping of nanocrystalline CdS thin films by electrodeposition method for solar cell application: the influence of dopant precursor concentration

Unravelling complex nature of CdS/CdTe based thin film solar cells

Synthesis of Thin Films of Sulfides of Cadmium, Lead and Copper by Chemical Bath Deposition

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