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Development of ZnTe as a back contact material for thin film cadmium telluride solar cells
journal contribution
posted on 2017-02-24, 11:48 authored by Sona Ulicna, Patrick IsherwoodPatrick Isherwood, Piotr M. Kaminski, Michael WallsMichael Walls, Jiaojiao Li, Colin A. WoldenCadmium telluride (CdTe) is high-efficiency commercialised thin film photovoltaic technology. However, developing a stable low-resistivity back contact to the CdTe solar cells is still an issue. High work function and low level of doping of this material don't allow to create an ohmic contact with metals directly. Copper is commonly used to lower the back contact barrier in CdTe solar cells, but an excessive amount of copper diffusing through the cell is harmful for the device performance and stability. In this work a copper-doped ZnTe (ZnTe:Cu) buffer layer was incorporated in between CdTe and gold metal contact by high-rate pulsed DC magnetron sputtering. The back contact was then activated by rapid thermal processing (RTP) resulting in spectacular improvement in key device performance indicators, open circuit voltage (VOC) and fill factor (FF).
Funding
The authors would like to acknowledge RCUK for providing financial support through the Supergen SuperSolar Hub (EPSRC Grant No. EP/J017361/1).
History
School
- Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering
Published in
VacuumCitation
ULICNA, S. ... et al, 2017. Development of ZnTe as a back contact material for thin film cadmium telluride solar cells. Vacuum, 139, pp. 159-163.Publisher
Elsevier © The AuthorsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2017-01-01Publication date
2017-01-03Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ISSN
0042-207XPublisher version
Language
- en