Using a 10 nm thick molybdenum oxide (MoO3-x) layer as a transparent and low barrier contact to p-CdTe, we demonstrate nanowire CdS-CdTe solar cells with a power conversion efficiency of 11% under front side illumination. Annealing the as-deposited MoO3 film in N2 resulted in a reduction of the cell's series resistance, from 9.97 Ω/cm(2) to 7.69 Ω/cm(2), and increase in efficiency from 9.9% to ...

Superhydrophobic particulate films were fabricated via deposition of raspberry-like fluorescent PS/CdTe/silica microspheres on clean glass substrates and surface modification. Particularly, the fluorescent microspheres were prepared by a kind of modified strategy, namely introducing poly (acrylic acid)-functionalized polystyrene microspheres and thiol-stabilized CdTe quantum dots into a hydroly...

We report on a study of the effects of diffusion of metals through polycyrstalline CdTe thin films. The metals Ni, Pd, Cu, Cr, and Te are deposited onto the back surface of 10-μm thick CdTe/CdS device structures using room-temperature evaporation. We found that four out of the five metals produce significant changes in the photoluminescence (PL) of the near-junction CdTe material. These changes...

Solution-processed CdTe nanocrystals solar cells have attracted much attention due to their low cost, low material consumption, and potential for roll-to-roll production. Among all kinds of semiconductor materials, CdS exhibits the lowest lattice mismatch with CdTe, which permits high junction quality and high device performance. In this study, high quality CdS nanocrystals were prepared by a n...

Processing strategies are presented for controlling junction quality as both window and absorber layer thickness are reduced in polycrystalline superstrate CdS/CdTe thin-film solar cells. High resistance In2O3 and SnO2 oxide buffer layers improve coverage of chemical bath deposited CdS and device performance with PVD CdTe, resulting in efficiencies >13.5%. A new method of CdS and Cd1-xZnxS chem...

Thiol-capped CdTe nanocrystals with cubic zinc blende structure are synthesized in aqueous solution. Their steady-state and time-resolved luminescence characteristics are studied at room and liquid nitrogen temperatures. A strong exciton luminescence peak at 2.3 eV dominates the emission spectrum of CdTe nanocrystals at room temperature, whereas the trap band centered at 2.0 eV undergoes substa...

In the conventional CdS/CdTe device structure, the poly-CdS window layer has a bandgap of ~2.4 eV, which causes absorption in the short-wavelength region. Higher short-circuit current densities (Jsc) can be achieved by reducing the CdS thickness, but this can adversely impact device open-circuit voltage (Voc) and fill factor (FF). Also, poly-CdS film has about 10% lattice mismatch related to th...

Solution-processed CdTe nanocrystals (NCs) photovoltaic devices have many advantages, both in commercial manufacture and daily operation, due to the low-cost fabrication process, which becomes a competitive candidate for next-generation solar cells. All solution-processed CdTe NCs solar cells were first reported in 2005. In recent years, they have increased over four-fold in power conversion ef...

DLTS and associated electrical measurements were made on unintentionally doped CdTe crystals obtained from several vendors, on Cu-doped CdTe, and on Te-annealed CdTe. All of the crystals were p-type. Four majority carrier deep levels were observed in the temperature range from 100-300 K with activation energies relative to the valence band of0.2, 0.41, 0.45, and 0.65 eV. Two of these levels wer...