2134/37227 Rachael Greenhalgh Rachael Greenhalgh Ali Abbas Ali Abbas Amit Munshi Amit Munshi Tushar M. Shimpi Tushar M. Shimpi Kurt L. Barth Kurt L. Barth Walajabad S. Sampath Walajabad S. Sampath Jake Bowers Jake Bowers Michael Walls Michael Walls Activation of thin film CdTe solar cells using a cadmium bromide treatment Loughborough University 2019 CdTe CdBr2 Activation TEM EQE EDX Mechanical Engineering not elsewhere classified 2019-03-18 14:35:18 Conference contribution https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/conference_contribution/Activation_of_thin_film_CdTe_solar_cells_using_a_cadmium_bromide_treatment/9557624 The activation of CdTe with a cadmium chloride annealing treatment is a vital step in the fabrication of high efficiency solar cells. Thin film MZO/CdTe cells have been activated using CdBr2 instead of CdCl2 with a lower activation process temperature. Using this method, CdBr2 does activate the cell as revealed by J-V and EQE measurements. TEM and EDX elemental maps from device cross-sections confirm that bromine is present in the grain boundaries. TEM shows that the treatment removes stacking faults at 425 °C. CdBr2 treatment resulted in a relatively modest conversion efficiency of 5.49% when treated at 375 °C. Nevertheless, the experiments shed further light on the mechanisms involved in the activation.