Improvement of composition of CdTe thin films during heat treatment in the presence of CdCl₂

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• 作者：I. M. Dharmadasa ; O. K. Echendu ; F. Fauzi…
• 刊名：Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：28
• 期：3
• 页码：2343-2352
• 全文大小：3188KB
• 刊物类别：Chemistry and Materials Science
• 刊物主题：Optical and Electronic Materials; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1573-482X
• 卷排序：28

文摘

CdCl₂ treatment is a crucial step in development of CdS/CdTe solar cells. Although this processing step has been used over a period of three decades, full understanding is not yet achieved. This paper reports the experimental evidence for improvement of composition of CdTe layers during CdCl₂ treatment. This investigation makes use of four selected analytical techniques; Photo-electro-chemical (PEC) cell, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). CdTe layers used were electroplated using three Cd precursors; CdSO₄, Cd(NO₃)₂ and CdCl₂. Results show the improvement of stoichiometry of CdTe layers during CdCl₂ treatment through chemical reaction between Cd from CdCl₂ and elemental Te that usually precipitate during CdTe growth, due to its natural behaviour. XRD and SEM results show that the low-temperature (~85 °C) electroplated CdTe layers consist of ~(20–60) nm size crystallites, but after CdCl₂ treatment, the layers show drastic recrystallisation with grains becoming a few microns in size. These CdCl₂ treated layers are then comparable to high temperature grown CdTe layers by the size of grains.