High Efficiency CdTe/CdS Thin Film Solar Cell (original) (raw)
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IJERT-High Efficiency CdTe/CdS Thin Film Solar Cell
International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology (IJERT), 2015
https://www.ijert.org/high-efficiency-cdtecds-thin-film-solar-cell https://www.ijert.org/research/high-efficiency-cdtecds-thin-film-solar-cell-IJERTV4IS090669.pdf Cadmium telluride is a promising photovoltaic material for thin-film solar cells. A study has been made to improve the efficiency of CdTe/CdS solar cell. To obtain the highest efficiency, the thickness of CdTe and CdS has been modified separately to check the improvement of cell efficiency in PC1D simulator and efficiency beyond 20% has been achieved.
Cadmium Telluride/Cadmium Sulfide Thin Films Solar Cells: A Review
ES energy & environment, 2020
The efficiency and steadiness of solar cells are dependent on the experimental conditions during the fabrication of the device. In the present review, development in the last few decades in CdTe/CdS solar cells on different conducting substrates, their characterizations, and their effect on their performances has been illustrated. The variations in the efficiency were observed for the CdTe/CdS solar cells because of not only different deposition methods but also the difference in deposition conditions. In addition to this contact, material plays a significant role in the performance of a solar cell. CdTe/CdS solar cells with cheaper, greater efficiency can be possible soon.
WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development, 2010
Abstract:-Polycrystalline cadmium telluride (CdTe) is the leading material for realization of low cost and high efficiency solar cell for terrestrial use. In this work, a conventional structure of CdTe thin film solar cells [1] was investigated and conversion efficiency as high as 13.2% was achieved with the CdTe baseline structure of SnO2/CdS/CdTe. To explore the possibility of ultra thin and high efficiency CdS/CdTe solar cells, the CdTe absorber layer and CdS window layer were decreased to the extreme limit and 1 m thin CdTe layer is ...
JMSE, 2019
Cadmium telluride-based solar cell is the most successfully commercialised thin film solar cell today. The laboratory-scale small devices have achieved ~ 22%, and commercial solar panels have reached ~ 18% conversion efficiencies. However, there are various technical complications and some notable scientific contradictions that appear in the scientific literature published since the early 1970s. This review paper discusses some of these major complications and controversies in order to focus future research on issues of material growth and characterisation, post-growth processing, device architectures and interpretation of the results. Although CdTe can be grown using more than 14 different growth techniques, successful com-mercialisation has been taken place using close-space sublimation and electrodeposition techniques only. The experimental results presented in this review are mainly based on electrodeposition. Historical trends of research and commercial successes have also been discussed compared to the timeline of novel breakthroughs in this field. Deeper understanding of these issues may lead to further increase in conversion efficiencies of this solar cell. Some novel ideas for further development of thin film solar cells are also discussed towards the end of this paper.
Influence of CdTe thickness on structural and electrical properties of CdTe/CdS solar cells
Thin Solid Films, 2013
Due to its high scalability and low production cost, CdTe solar cells have shown a very strong potential for large scale energy production. Although the number of modules produced could be limited by tellurium scarcity, it has been reported that reducing CdTe thickness down to 1.5 μm would solve this issue. There are, however, issues to be considered when reducing thickness, such as formation of pinholes, lower crystallization, and different possible effects on material diffusion within the interfaces. In this work, we present the study of CdTe solar cells fabricated by vacuum evaporation with different CdTe thicknesses. Several cells with a CdTe thickness ranging from 0.7 to 6 μm have been fabricated. The deposition process has been optimized accordingly and their physical and electrical properties have been studied. Thin cells show a different electrical behavior in terms of open circuit voltage and fill factor. Efficiencies range from 7% for thin CdTe cells to 13.5% for the standard thickness.
Several Efficiency Influencing Factors In CdTe/CdS Solar Cells
MRS Proceedings, 1997
Several efficiency influencing factors in MOCVD-grown CdTe/CdS solar cells, including preferential crystal orientation of CdTe layers, CdTe grain size and surface roughness, interfacial mixing, and surface and interface geometrical morphology, are studied. X-ray diffraction (XRD) shows that polycrystalline CdTe/CdS solar cells with higher efficiencies tend to have more (111) planes of CdTe parallel to the macro-surface. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis reveal the relationship between the grain size/surface roughness and cell efficiency. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) depth profiling show that the interfacial geometrical morphology has a significant influence on the efficiency of CdTe/CdS solar cells. Finally it is shown that interfacial mixing reduces the number of interfacial states and recombination centers and the energy loss due to internal reflectance, enhancing the performance of the sol...
Numerical Analysis on Prospects of High Efficiency CdS/CdTe Thin Film Solar Cell
Photovoltaic (PV) energy is one of the significant renewable energies with free and permanent resource. Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) is from group II-VI of compound polycrystalline semiconductors. The CdTe solar cell material can be produced in thinness of film; hence, it is very appropriate for thin film solar cell industry production. The main purpose of this investigation is to model and analyze a prospect structure of thin film CdTe solar cell by AMPS-1D software. In this solar cell structure, Thin Oxide (SnO 2) as front contact, Cadmium Sulfide (CdS) as window layer, CdTe as absorber layer and Molybdenum (Mo) as back contact are used respectively. In this paper, the carrier concentration changes, thicknesses effects, temperature stability and effect of two buffer layers of Zinc Stannate (Zn 2 SnO 4) and Zinc Oxide (ZnO) on the CdTe solar cell output performance are investigated to obtain an optimum thin film structure of CdTe solar cell. This study aims to obtain the thickness of f...
Solar Energy, 2021
This paper describes the simulation study for the optimization of high-performance cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar cells using different doping concentrations, carrier lifetimes, temperature, and thickness of layers of CdTe absorber and CdS window layers. In this simulation, the highest efficiencies of ~18% and ~18.29% achieved when the doping concentrations were 1.5 × 1017 cm−3 for absorber layer and 1 × 1015 cm−3 for window layer, respectively. The efficiency of the solar cell increases with increase in carrier lifetime and the highest efficiency of 18.26% achieved at carrier lifetime 100 μs with doping concentration of 1 × 1017 cm−3. Solar cell with the thickness of absorber layer 8 μm at carrier lifetime 100 μs attained the maximum efficiency of 19.18% whereas the efficiency of 18.33% was noticed in thickness of window layer 70 nm at 100 μs carrier lifetime. The optimum efficiency of 18.3% with short-circuit current 2.66 A and open-circuit voltage 0.79 V of solar cell has been achieved at operating temperature 25 °C. The optimized energy band gap of absorber (1.7 eV) accomplished the highest efficiency of 18.31%. The photogeneration rate increases logarithmically as distance from front increases, while the recombination rate increases linearly, which could be suitable for fabrication of efficient solar cell.
Progress towards high efficiency thin film CdTe solar cells
Solar Cells, 1988
This paper describes work investigating high rate cadmium telluride (CdTe) film deposition by close-space vapor transport, leading to 4 cm 2 tin oxide/CdTe solar cells of efficiency greater than 10%. Under a 100 mW cm-2 air mass 1.5 global spectrum, a cell of efficiency 10.5% had a short-circuit current of 28.1 mAcm-2, an open circuit voltage of 0.663 V and a fill factor of 0.563. Our major achievements include (1) the use of completely nonvacuum processing, (2) the fabrication of simple transparent conductive oxide/CdTe cells without need of a CdS window layer, and (3) screenprinted back contacts.