Effects of the substrate temperature on the properties of CdTe thin films deposited by pulsed laser deposition

Peng-chen, HU; Li, Bing; Feng, Li; Wu, Judy; Jiang, Hao; Yang, Huimin; Xiao, X.L.

doi:10.1016/j.surfcoat.2012.10.022

Cited by 29 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The obtained CdTe films in PLD process are polycrystalline with a cubic structure when the substrate temperature is above 200 °C revealed from X-ray analyses of the phase and crystallinity and scanning electron microscopy study of the surface morphology [10]- [11]. In addition, larger 978-1-4799-3299-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE grain size was observed at higher growth temperatures with typical dimension of 500-600 nm at 500° C. It was also shown that CdS films with optimal morphology and transmittance are made using PLD with a substrate temperature of 200° C when depositing in vacuum [4].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In our recent work a mixed Ar + O 2 gas (8% O 2 ) was employed and 15 torr total pressure was found optimal at 500°C substrate temperature for CdTe absorber layer growth in terms of controlling the CdTe grain morphology and phase purity, both of which are important to the power conversion efficiency [4]. The O 2 partial pressure was found crucial in the nucleation and evolution of CdTe [10]- [11]. In contrast, the inert Ar gas is not expected to affect the phase formation of CdTe and alter the chemical composition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effects of pressure on the fabrication of CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells made via pulsed laser deposition

Harrison

Meeth

et al. 2013

2013 IEEE 39th Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC)

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CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells with 100 nm CdS and 1.0-1.5 µm CdTe have been made in situ using pulsed laser deposition (PLD). This work intends to investigate the effect of PLD chamber pressure on the CdTe absorber layer. In particular, a comparison between two specific cases of Ar at 8% of O 2 and pure O 2 was made to elucidate the role of O 2 and Ar in formation and physical properties of the CdTe absorber. At the same O 2 partial pressure of 1.2 torr, an efficiency of 6.4% was obtained in the latter case, which represents a considerable improvement over the former case with the best efficiency of 6.7% previously reported which utilized a 1.5 µm CdTe layer. This result suggests that the availability of oxygen near the growing CdTe film is important during PLD of CdTe layers and the better performance in PLD of CdTe in pure O 2 may be attributed to the more preserved kinetic energy of the reaction species due to the reduced total gas pressure.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of pressure on the fabrication of CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells made via pulsed laser deposition

Harrison

Meeth

et al. 2013

2013 IEEE 39th Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC)

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“…The PLD system consists of a 248 nm KrF excimer laser from Lambda Physik with a 20 ns laser pulse duration. The absorber and window layer targets are mounted inside a vacuum chamber on rotating stands that allow for both targets to be moved into the path of the laser and rotation about the axis of the targets facilitates uniform ablation of the target surface [7,8,[10][11][12]. The CdS and CdTe targets were obtained from ACI Alloys and had a 99.99% purity.…”

Section: Experimental Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of Combinatorial Pulsed Laser Deposition for Expedited Device Optimization in CdTe/CdS Thin-Film Solar Cells

Kadhim

Harrison

Meeth

et al. 2016

International Journal of Optics

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A combinatorial pulsed laser deposition system was developed by integrating a computer controlled scanning sample stage in order to rapidly screen processing conditions relevant to CdTe/CdS thin-film solar cells. Using this system, the thickness of the CdTe absorber layer is varied across a single sample from 1.5 m to 0.75 m. The effects of thickness on CdTe grain morphology, crystal orientation, and cell efficiency were investigated with respect to different postprocessing conditions. It is shown that the thinner CdTe layer of 0.75 m obtained the best power conversion efficiency up to 5.3%. The results of this work shows the importance that CdTe grain size/morphology relative to CdTe thickness has on device performance and quantitatively exhibits what those values should be to obtain efficient thin-film CdTe/CdS solar cells fabricated with pulsed laser deposition. Further development of this combinatorial approach could enable high-throughput exploration and optimization of CdTe/CdS solar cells.

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“…However, the reports are mainly focused on physical properties of the films as evaluated by scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, UV-Vis and X-ray diffraction [24,25]. PLD-based solar cells with efficiencies from 3% to 10.5% have also been reported [16][17][18][19][20][21]. In this paper, in-situ deposited CdTe/CdS films are analyzed with a special emphasis on their electrical properties using current-voltage…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most thin film CdTe heterojunctions (< 5 m) are formed with CdS as the window layer in solar cells [1,3,4,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. So far, most CdTe/CdS reports are focused on evaluating the impact of this material on solar cells performance as function of CdTe deposition parameters such as substrate temperature, deposition pressure, post deposition treatments as well as metal contacts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In-situ CdS/CdTe heterojuntions deposited by pulsed laser deposition

et al. 2016

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In this paper pulsed laser deposition (PLD) methods are used to study p-n CdTe/CdS heterojunctions fabricated in-situ. In-situ film deposition allows higher quality p-n interfaces by minimizing spurious contamination from the atmosphere. Morphologic and structural analyses were carried for CdTe films deposited on various substrates and different deposition conditions. The electrical characteristics and performance of the resulting p-n heterojunctions were studied as function of substrate and post-deposition anneal temperature. In-situ growth results on diodes with a rectification factor of ~ 10 5 , an ideality factor < 2, and a reverse saturation current ~10-8 A. The carrier concentration in the CdTe film was in the range of ~10 15 cm-3 , as measured by C-V methods. The possible impact of sulfur diffusion from the CdS into the CdTe film is also investigated using High Resolution Rutherford Back-Scattering.

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Effects of the substrate temperature on the properties of CdTe thin films deposited by pulsed laser deposition

Cited by 29 publications

References 15 publications

The effects of pressure on the fabrication of CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells made via pulsed laser deposition

The effects of pressure on the fabrication of CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells made via pulsed laser deposition

Development of Combinatorial Pulsed Laser Deposition for Expedited Device Optimization in CdTe/CdS Thin-Film Solar Cells

In-situ CdS/CdTe heterojuntions deposited by pulsed laser deposition

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