Studies on Structural Properties of CdTe (Doped Ag) Thin Films on Glass Substrates-Solar Cell Applications

Abstract

This work deals with the fabrication and structural characterization of cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin films doped with silver (Ag) which were prepared by stacked elemental layer (SEL) method using the physical vapour deposition (PVD) unit. The samples were deposited on soda lime glass substrates which were annealed at different temperatures from 200C to 425C. The doping concentration (5% -20% of Ag atoms) and film thicknesses were varied. X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques were employed to study the structural properties of thin film samples. It was found that the samples have a cubic crystal structure highly oriented with the hkl values of (111) plane. The grain size was observed to increase as the annealing temperature as well as the film thickness increases.