Evaporated CdSe for Efficient Polycrystalline CdSeTe Thin-Film Solar Cells

Neupane, Sabin; Li, Deng-Bing; Jamarkattel, Manoj Kumar; Abudulimu, Abasi; Jiang, Chun-Sheng; Bista, Sandip S.; Adhikari, Alisha; Budhathoki, Sanjeeb; Sharif, Hamim; Lamichhane, Kiran; Brau, Tyler; Phillips, Adam B.; Shan, Ambalanath; Ellingson, Randall J.; Heben, Michael J.; Yan, Yanfa

doi:10.1021/acsenergylett.4c02874

Evaporated CdSe for Efficient Polycrystalline CdSeTe Thin-Film Solar Cells

Journal Article · Wed Dec 04 04:00:00 EST 2024 · ACS Energy Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.4c02874· OSTI ID:2483878

Neupane, Sabin; Li, Deng-Bing; Jamarkattel, Manoj Kumar; Abudulimu, Abasi; Jiang, Chun-Sheng; Bista, Sandip S.; Adhikari, Alisha; Budhathoki, Sanjeeb; Sharif, Hamim; Lamichhane, Kiran; Brau, Tyler; Phillips, Adam B.; Shan, Ambalanath; Ellingson, Randall J.; Heben, Michael J.; Yan, Yanfa

Recent progress has shown that alloying cadmium telluride (CdTe) with cadmium selenide (CdSe) to create a CdSexTe1-x (CdSeTe) gradient region can significantly boost the performance of polycrystalline CdSeTe thin-film solar cells. However, improper CdSeTe alloying might introduce problematic band alignment and deleterious voids at the front interface, limiting the benefit maximization of this technique. Here, we show that the CdSe layers deposited by thermal evaporation result in CdSeTe cells with a higher performance than the sputtered CdSe. This is because evaporated CdSe can avoid the formation of voids at the front interface, producing improved front junction quality with suppressed front junction nonradiative recombination. The champion cell using evaporated CdSe demonstrated a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 19.7%, much higher than 18.1% in the cell using sputtered CdSe.

Research Organization:: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office

DOE Contract Number:: AC36-08GO28308

OSTI ID:: 2483878

Report Number(s):: NREL/JA-5K00-92554; MainId:94335; UUID:1bc5dcdf-ffb4-40ca-88eb-50c5ac89d2ad; MainAdminId:75589

Journal Information:: ACS Energy Letters, Journal Name: ACS Energy Letters Journal Issue: 12 Vol. 9

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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