Thickness and annealing evolution to physical properties of e-beam evaporated ZnTe thin films as a rear contact for CdTe solar cells

An overview on the role of ZnTe as an efficient interface in CdTe thin film solar cells: a review

“…Thin film solar cells are comprised of several thin film layers and a variety of strategies is available thus far to develop them, [82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97] providing diverse properties. An overview of the physical and chemical routes is presented in Fig.…”

“…128 Electron beamevaporated ZnTe thin films were used in photodiode sensor devices as a buffer layer with the architecture of p-ZnTe:N/ CdTe:Mg/n-CdTe:I/GaAs. 129 Employing this technique, ZnTe films were developed with a thickness of 200 nm and 300 nm at the base vacuum of B7.5 Â 10 À6 Torr as interface layers, 82 thickness of 100 nm, 84 300 nm 130 and in the range of 100-500 nm 131 at vacuum of 7.5 Â 10 À6 Torr as the back contact layers. The obtained film parameters employing this method are presented in Table 3 with the corresponding references.…”

“…Thin film solar cells can be developed with better efficiency and stability by optimizing the thickness and properties of their different constituent layers, i.e., window, absorber, buffer and contact layers. As stated, a variety of deposition techniques has been employed thus far to grow the constituent layers, which are classified as follows: (a) physical and (b) chemical routes, where the resistive heating thermal evaporation, electron beam evaporation, molecular beam epitaxy, sputtering, and electrodeposition techniques have been used thus far for the fabrication of ZnTe thin films, [82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97] providing diverse properties. An overview of the physical and chemical routes is presented in Fig.…”

“…The evaluation of structural parameters such as crystal structure, inter-planar spacing, internal strain, crystallite size, dislocation density and number of crystallites per unit area of these films can be performed by analyzing their XRD patterns and using the corresponding relations available in the literature. 82,84,102,123 The Scherrer and Williamson Hall relations are well-known approaches for the determination of the crystallite size, while the latter approach can also be used to simultaneously determine the strain as well. ZnTe thin films were deposited using various deposition techniques and it was observed that in most cases, ZnTe thin films were crystallized in the cubic phase with the zinc blende structure having the preferred (111) orientation, as depicted in Tables 2-5 depending on the different growth techniques.…”

A New Conformationally Symmetrical Calix[4]pyrrole Based Supramolecular System for Liquid Crystalline and Window Layer Solar Cell Applications

“…On annealing the films at 100 °C, the formation of larger grains took place by means of addition of smaller sized grains which designated enhanced crystallinity of the prepared CPB 2 thin films. [53] The calculated average grain size from FESEM micrographs is found as ~120 nm, and ~145 nm for as deposited and film annealed at 100 °C. Thus, the heat treatment is a required process for uniformity of the grown films and diminution of imperfections or defects.…”