Fabrication of TCO/CdS/CdTe/Au solar cells using different CdCl2 treatments

In this work CdS/CdTe solar cells were submitted to solution, sublimation and vapor CdCl2 treatments, followed by NP etch for several periods of time. The influence of these procedures on cell efficiency is discussed. The individual layers are analyzed and the results are compared with similar studies in the literature. The best NP etching time was 20 s for all CdCl2 treatments. The highest efficiency was achieved for the cell submitted to the solution treatment at 380 °C. Although the layers have shown good properties for a high efficiency cell, the maximum overall efficiency was only 7.8%, probably due to high series and low shunt resistances.