Influence of Cadmium Telluride Films' Processing Types on Efficiency of Solar Cells

It was studied the influence of chloride processing of CdTe films, obtained by the close-spaced sublimation, on their crystal structure and the solar cells efficiency based on them. It is shown that annealing in cadmium chloride vapor leads to the formation of solar cells with higher efficiency than deposition on the surface of the cadmium chloride base layer with the following annealing. Surface morphology studies indicate that, in the initial state, the cadmium telluride base layers obtained by the close-spaced sublimation have a close-packed structure with a grain size of 2 to 6 mu m, and the chloride treatment of the surface morphology of cadmium telluride layers and the degree of preferential orientation in the [422] direction practically do not change. It was found that the lattice parameter of CdTe layers obtained by the close-spaced sublimation was 6.495 angstrom, after the gas-phase chloride treatment, the lattice period decreases to 6.486 angstrom, and the solid-state, to 6.490 angstrom.