ZnTe:O/CdS/ZnO intermediate band solar cells grown on ITO/glass substrate by pulsed laser deposition

Low-cost, high efficiency solar cells are tremendous interests for the realization of a renewable and clean energy source. ZnTe based solar cells have a possibility of high efficiency with formation of an intermediated energy band structure by impurity doping. In this work, the ZnTe:O/CdS/ZnO structure was fabricated by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. A pulsed (10 Hz) Nd:YAG laser operating at a wavelength of 266 nm was used to produce a plasma plume from an ablated a ZnTe target, whose density of laser energy was 4.5 J/cm2. The base pressure of the chamber was kept at a pressure of approximately $4{\times}10-7Torr$. ZnO thin film with thickness of 100 nm was grown on to ITO/glass, and then CdS and ZnTe:O thin film were grown on ZnO thin film. Thickness of CdS and ZnTe:O were 50 nm and 500 nm, respectively. During deposition of ZnTe:O films, O2 gas was introduced from 1 to 20 mTorr. For fabricating ZnTe:O/CdS/ZnO solar cells, Au metal was deposited on the ITO film and ZnTe:O by thermal evaporation method. From the fabricated ZnTe:O/CdS/ZnO solar cell, current-voltage characteristics was measured by using HP 4156-a semiconductor parameter analyzer. Finally, solar cell performance was measured using an Air Mass 1.5 Global (AM 1.5 G) solar simulator with an irradiation intensity of 100 mW cm-2.