Photoluminescence and extended X-ray absorption fine structure studies on cadmium telluride material

The direct-band-gap semiconductor CdTe is an important material for fabricating high efficiency, polycrystalline thin-film solar cells in a heterojunction configuration. The outstanding physical properties of this material such as its good band-gap match to the solar spectrum, ease of fabrication of stoichiometric films, and easy grain boundary passivation make it an important candidate for large area, thin-film solar cells. However, there are several poorly understood processing steps that are commonly utilized in cell fabrication. One of these is a CdCl2 treatment near 400°C in the presence of oxygen, which can improve the cell efficiency a factor of two or more.; Another factor is the role of copper in cell performance. In high performance CdS/CdTe thin-film solar cells, copper is usually included in the fabrication of low-resistance back contacts to obtain heavy p-type doping of the absorber CdTe at the contact. However, most of the copper is not electrically active. For example, secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) on typical CdTe cells has shown Cu concentrations of 1019 atoms/cm3 and even higher, although capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements indicate typical ionized acceptor levels on the order of 1014/cm 3. Thus, there is great interest in the location and role of this inactive copper in CdTe photovoltaic (PV) devices.; In this thesis, I will describe results obtained on magnetron-sputtered CdTe films that were diffused with copper following the procedure used for creating a cell back contact. Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) measurements identified the chemical environment of the majority of the copper and show major differences depending on whether the CdTe film has been treated with chloride prior to the Cu diffusion. The EXAFS data indicate that the Cu chemistry is strongly affected by the chloride treatments---predominantly Cu2Te when Cu was diffused into the as-deposited CdTe film, but a Cu2O environment when Cu was diffused after the vapor CdCl2 treatment. There is also evidence that indicates this Cu2O in CdCl2 treated film locates mostly at interface of CdTe and Au contact and possibly also at CdTe grain boundaries. The significance for contact barrier and grain boundary passivation due to the Cu2O will be discussed. Transformation of Cu2O to CuO in CdCl2 treated CdTe film after treatment under stressed conditions is observed, which indicates an additional degradation mechanism on the CdTe photovoltaic device. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...