• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 1989.06a
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• pp.56-58
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• 1989

All-polycrystalline Cd$_1$-xZnxS/CdTe solar cells have been fabricated by coating CdTe slurries with 4.5 wt% of CdCl$_2$on the sintered Cd$_1$-xZnxS films and by sintering CdTe layer at 6$25^{\circ}C$ for lh in nitrogen atmosphere. Solar efficiency of the sintered Cd$_1$-xZnxS/CdTe solar cells increases as the Zn content increases up to x=0.06 and then decreases with further increase in the Zn content. A solar efficiency of 12.5% under a solar intensity of 76mW/$\textrm{cm}^2$ was observed in a Cd 0.94 Zn0.06S/CdTe solar cell. By optimizing the amount of CdCl$_2$in the slurry and sintering conditions, it is possible to produce Cd$_1$-xZnxS/CdTe solar cells with efficiency higher than 12%.

• Electrical & Electronic Materials
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.26-34
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• 1988

Sintered CdS/CdTe solar cells have been farbricated by coating a (Cd+Te) slurry on sintered CdS films followed by the sintering at 625.deg.C for one hour with various heating rates. When cadmium and tellurinm powders are used instead of CdTe powder to form CdS/CdTe junction, CdTe is formed in the temperature range of 290.deg.C-400.deg.C. The microstructure of the CdTe films depends strongly on the heating rate of the sintering due to the low melting temperature and the high vapor pressure of the elemental Cd and Te. An optimum heating rate obtain CdTe films with uniform and dense microstructure which, in turn, improves the efficiency of the sintered CdS/CdTe solar cells. All-polycrystalline CdS/CdTe solar cells with an efficiency of 9.57% under 50mW/cm$^{2}$ tungsten light have been farbricated by using a heating rate of 14.deg.C/min.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1987.11a
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• pp.200-202
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• 1987

Sintered CdS films on glass substrate with low electrical resistivity and high optical transmittance have been prepared by coating and sintering method. All-polycrystalline CdS/CdTe solar cells with different microstructure and properties of CdTe layer were fabricated by coating a number of CdTe slurries, which consisted of Cd and Te powders, an appropriate amount of propylene glycol and 2 or 7.5 w/o $CdC1_2$, on the sintered CdS films and by sintering the glass-CdS-(Cd+Te) composites at various temperature. To explore the dependence of the solar efficiency on the preparation conditions of the CdTe layer, Cd powder with an average particle size of $0.3{\mu}m$ or $5{\mu}m$ was prepared. The use of Cd with finer particles forms more dense or uniform microstructure of the nuclear of CdTe during the heating. Therefore the use of Cd with finer particles improves the efficiency of the sintered CdS/CdTe solar cell by improving the microstructure of sintered CdTe layer. But the difference of solar efficiency by varing a particle size of Cd is decreased with increasing amount of $CdC1_2$ in the (Cd+Te) layer. All-polycrystalline CdS/CdTe solar cells with an efficiency of 10.2% under solar irradiation have been fabricated using a Cd with finer particles.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1987.11a
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• pp.248-250
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• 1987

Transparent CdS films with low electrical restivity on glass substrates were prepared by coating a CdS slurry which contained 10 wt.% $CdCl_2$, and sintering in a nitrogen atmosphere at $600^{\circ}C$ for 2hr. All-polycrystalline CdS/CdTe solar cells were fabricated by coating CdTe slurries, which contained 1.0 or 4.5 wt.% $CdCl_2$, on the sintered CdS films and sintering at $700^{\circ}C$ for various periods of sintering. The spectral responses of the sintered CdS/CdTe solar cells were measured and compared with theoretically calculated quantum efficiency. The spectral responses of the sintered CdS/CdTe solar cells in the short-wavelength region decreases with-increasing sintering time. The poor response in this region is attributed to the existence of the Cd-S-Te solid solution in the compositional junction. The decrease in the maximum response in the long-wavelength region as the sintering exceeds certain time appears to be caused by the increase in the depth of the buried homo junction and by the increase in the series resistance. The $CdCl_2$ in the CdTe layer during sintering enchances the interdiffusion of S, Te or donor impurities across the metallurgical Junction causing the formation of deeper n-p junction in the CdTe layer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.318.2-318.2
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• 2014

The high contact resistance is still one of the major issues to be resolved in CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells. CdTe/Metal Schottky contact induced a high contact resistance in CdS/CdTe solar cells. It has been reported that the work function of CdTe thin film is more than 5.7 eV. There has not been a suitable back contact metal, because CdTe thin film has a high work function. In a few decades, some buffer layer was reported to improve a back contact problem. Buffer layers which are Te, $Sb_2Te_3$, $Cu_2Te$, ZnTe:Cu and so on was inserted between CdTe and metal electrode. A formed buffer layers made a tunnel junction. Hole carriers which was excited in CdTe film by light absorption was transported from CdTe to back metal electrode. In this report, we reported the variation of solar cell performance with different buffer layer at the back contact of CdTe thin film solar cell.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 1994.11a
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• pp.216-220
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• 1994

Polycrystalline CdS films have been prepared by coating a slurry, which consisted of CdS, 11w% CdCl$_2$ and appropriate amount of propylene glycol, on glass substrate and glass substrate coated with indium tin oxide(ITO) followed by sintering in a nitrogen atmosphere. CdTe slurries consisting of Te powder and Cd powder were coated on the sintered CdS films and ITO/CdS films and were sintered in nitrogen to prepare sintered CdS/CdTe and ITO/CdS/CdTe solar cells. The value of fill factor increased due to low series resistance and open circuit voltage decreased due to low shunt resistance in the ITO/CdS/CdTe solar cells.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.48 no.8
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• pp.563-569
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• 1999

Boron doped CdS films were prepared by chemical bath deposition using boric acid$(H_3BO_3)$ as donor dopant source, and their electrical, optical properties were investigated as a function of doping concentration. In addition, effects of boron doping of CdS films on characteristics of CdS/CdTe solar cells were investigated. Boron doping highly decreased the resistivity and slightly increased optical band gap of CdS films. The lowest value of resistivity was $2 \Omega-cm \;at\; H_3BO_3/Cd(Ac)_2$ molar ratio of 0.1. For the molar ratio more than 0.1, however, the resistivity increased because of decreasing carrier concentration and mobility and showed similar value for undoped films. The photovoltaic characteristics of CdS/CdTe solar cells with boron doped CdS film improved due to the decrease of the conduction band-Fermi level energy gap of CdS films and the series resistance of solar cell.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.10-15
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• 2015

Cu doping by copper or $Cu_2Te$ materials enhances p+ formation in CdTe near the back contact interface, allowing better formation of ohmic contact. However, the Cu in CdTe junction is also considered as a principal component of CdTe cell degradation. In this paper, Na-doped ZnTe layer was employed as a back contact material to improve the stability of CdTe solar cells. As a process variable, post $CdCl_2$ treatment of CdS/CdTe film was conducted before or after depositing ZnTe:Na on CdTe. The change of the photovoltaic properties of CdTe cells were investigated with aging time. Low-temperature photoluminescence analysis was conducted to describe the degradation mechanism. The result showed that the CdTe solar cells with better stability compare to Cu contact were achieved using an optimized ZnTe:Na back contact.

• Journal of Radiation Industry
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.17-22
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• 2014

In this study, we prepared CdTe/CdS solar cells using a thermal vacuum evaporation method. In particular, $CdCl_2$ treatment was attempted using this same method at $400^{\circ}C$ for 30 min. The prepared CdTe/CdS solar cells were investigated using Fouier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), and a solar simulator system including light absorption properties, morphological properties, and power conversion efficiency (PCE). In addition, we investigated the gamma-irradiation treatment at dose rates of 0 Gy, 500 Gy, 1 kGy, 10 kGy, and 30 kGy. The characteristics of gamma-irradiation treatment were studied based on the same method described above. In particular, it showed increased values as 0.826% higher than the non-irradiation of 0.448% from PCE analysis.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1996.07c
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• pp.1645-1647
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• 1996

Polycrystalline CdTe thin films -have been studied for photovoltaic application because of their high absorption coefficient and optimal band gap energy (1.54 eV) for solar energy conversion. In this study, we prepared CdTe films using RF-magnetron sputtering method and investigated structural, optical and electrical properties with spectrophotometer, XRD, EDX, and resistivity meter. CdTe films at $200\;^{\circ}C$ showed a mixture of zinc blend (Cubic) and wurtzite (hexagonal) phase. On the other hand, the films at $400\;^{\circ}C$ showed highly oriented structure having hexagonal structure. The resistivity of CdTe films deposited on $SiO_2$ substrates was about $10_7\;{\Omega}cm$. The value of resistivity decreased with the increase of the substrate temperature. CdTe were sputtered on CdS thin films prepared by chemical bath deposition for the formation of the heterojunction. I-V characteristics of these cells were measured at a light density of $100mw/cm^2$, AM. 1.0. The present thin film solar cells showed a conversion efficiency of about 5%.