In this paper, we present a comparative study of photoluminescence and its relation to the structural properties of cadmium sulphide (CdS) thin films grown by chemical bath deposition (CBD), close spaced vapour transport, laser ablation (LA) and sputtering. Taking into account that the physical properties of CdS thin films depend upon the growth technique and the optimization of the deposition conditions for each technique, we show that the best crystal perfection occurs for LA-CdS films since the main photoluminescence peak at low temperature is due to bound excitons (2.53 eV). As expected, the films with the worst crystalline quality are those grown by CBD, ascertained by the photoluminescence band around 1.72 eV due to sulfur vacancies ('red band') without the corresponding exciton band. The photoluminescence results are correlated to x-ray diffraction measurements that confirm the above results.

No abstract

No abstract

In this work, the influence of the properties of CdS thin films grown by chemical bath deposition upon the characteristics of CdS/CdTe solar cells, when varying the thiourea concentrations in the CdS bath solution, is studied. The important solar cell parameters such as short circuit current (J sc ), open circuit voltage (V oc ), fill factor (FF) and efficiency (η) were measured and it was noted that they improve for thiourea/CdCl 2 ratios (in the CdS deposition solution) up to 5, and drop for higher ratios in the range investigated. In addition, the ideal diode factor (n), saturation current (J o ) and series resistence (R s ) were studied under illumination and dark conditions. The results could be related to several factors, among them, the photoconductivity properties of the layers and the change of the CdS 1−x Te x layer at the CdS-CdTe interface.