Polycrystalline CdTe solar cells on buffered commercial TCO-coated glass with efficiencies above 15%

Banai, R. E.; Blissett, C.; Buurma, Christopher; Colegrove, Eric; Bechmann, P.; Ellsworth, J.; Morley, M.; Barnes, Stephanie L.; Lennon, C. M.; Gilmore, C.; Dhere, R. G.; Bergeson, Jeremy D.; Scott, Marty; Gessert, T. A.

doi:10.1109/pvsc.2011.6186679

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Additionally, ZMO is sensitive to moisture, which may lead to longterm instability issues [23][24][25] . On the other hand, the commercial SnO 2 buffer is very stable and can be easily reproduced with desirable electron conductivity 26,27 . Benefit from these advantages, SnO 2 has been successfully used for decades in CdTe manufacturing [26][27][28] .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, the commercial SnO 2 buffer is very stable and can be easily reproduced with desirable electron conductivity 26,27 . Benefit from these advantages, SnO 2 has been successfully used for decades in CdTe manufacturing [26][27][28] . Therefore, it is highly desirable to explore alternate approaches to reduce the recombination at the front interface to enable efficient Cd(Se,Te) solar cells fabrication using the commercial SnO 2 buffer.…”

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confidence: 99%

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20%-efficient polycrystalline Cd(Se,Te) thin-film solar cells with compositional gradient near the front junction

Bista

Awni

et al. 2022

Nat Commun

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Bandgap gradient is a proven approach for improving the open-circuit voltages (VOCs) in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 and Cu(Zn,Sn)Se2 thin-film solar cells, but has not been realized in Cd(Se,Te) thin-film solar cells, a leading thin-film solar cell technology in the photovoltaic market. Here, we demonstrate the realization of a bandgap gradient in Cd(Se,Te) thin-film solar cells by introducing a Cd(O,S,Se,Te) region with the same crystal structure of the absorber near the front junction. The formation of such a region is enabled by incorporating oxygenated CdS and CdSe layers. We show that the introduction of the bandgap gradient reduces the hole density in the front junction region and introduces a small spike in the band alignment between this and the absorber regions, effectively suppressing the nonradiative recombination therein and leading to improved VOCs in Cd(Se,Te) solar cells using commercial SnO2 buffers. A champion device achieves an efficiency of 20.03% with a VOC of 0.863 V.

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