Title :
Diffusion barriers for CdS/CdTe Solar cells fabricated on flexible substrates
Author :
Palekis, V. ; Singh, Karam ; Xianjin Feng ; Morel, Don L. ; Ferekides, Chris S.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng., Univ. of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
Abstract :
Thin film CdS/CdTe solar cells of the substrate configuration have been fabricated on stainless steel substrates. Impurities diffusing from the substrate to the film during fabrication were detrimental to the performance of the cells. SiO2, Si3N4, and MoxNy (molybdenum nitride) diffusion barriers were used in order to study the effect of these barriers on cell performance. The results suggest that cell performance improves with the use of these barriers. MoxNy resulted in the best performance solar cells. A critical step for high efficiency CdTe solar cells is the cadmium chloride heat treatment (CdCl2-HT). Different conditions of the CdCl2-HT were studied in order to optimize the parameters for the treatment of the substrate solar cells.
Keywords :
cadmium compounds; diffusion barriers; heat treatment; molybdenum compounds; silicon compounds; solar cells; stainless steel; thin film devices; CdS-CdTe; MoxNy; Si3N4; SiO2; cadmium chloride heat treatment; cell performance; diffusion barriers; flexible substrates; molybdenum nitride; stainless steel substrates; thin film solar cells; Annealing; Films; Impurities; Performance evaluation; Photovoltaic cells; Substrates; cadmium compounds; current-voltage characteristics; heat treatment; photovoltaic cells;
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2013 IEEE 39th
Conference_Location :
Tampa, FL
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.2013.6744344
