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Abbas - Cadmium Chloride Assisted Re-Crystallization of CdTe The effect of annealing over-treatment - 2014.pdf (1.34 MB)

Cadmium chloride-assisted re-crystallization of CdTe: the effect of annealing over-treatment

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conference contribution
posted on 2014-08-22, 15:28 authored by Ali AbbasAli Abbas, Geoff West, Jake BowersJake Bowers, Piotr Kaminski, Bianca Maniscalco, Michael WallsMichael Walls, Kurt L. Barth, Walajabad S. Sampath
Although the cadmium chloride treatment is an essential process for high efficiency thin film cadmium telluride photovoltaic devices, the precise mechanisms involved that improve the cadmium telluride layer are not fully understood. The treatment parameters have a narrow window, deviating from these even slightly can be detrimental to cell performance. In this investigation we apply advanced microstructural characterization techniques to study the effects of varying two parameters: the temperature of the substrate during the cadmium chloride treatment and the length of time of the treatment. In both cases, the devices have been deliberately over-treated. The effect of the over-treatment on the microstructure of cadmium telluride solar cells, deposited by close spaced sublimation is investigated and related to cell performance. A range of techniques has been used to observe the changes to the microstructure as well as the chemical and crystallographic changes as a function of treatment parameters. Electrical tests that link the device performance with the microstructural properties of the cells have also been undertaken. Techniques used include Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) for sub-grain analysis, EDX for chemical analysis and XPS for composition-depth profiling.

Funding

The Loughborough authors are grateful to EPSRC for financial assistance through the Supergen SuperSolar Hub and the CSU authors to the NSF I/UCRC and AIR programs.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference

Pages

? - ? (6)

Citation

ABBAS, A. ... (et al.), 2014. Cadmium chloride-assisted re-crystallization of CdTe: the effect of annealing over-treatment. Presented at: 2014 40th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), Denver, USA, 8-13 June, pp.0701-0706.

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© IEEE

Version

  • SMUR (Submitted Manuscript Under Review)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Publication date

2014

Notes

This is a conference paper. © 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redisitribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

Language

  • en

Location

Demver, USA

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