Recent progress in thin‐film cadmium telluride solar cells

Abstract

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) with a room-temperature bandgap energy of 1.45 eV has been shown to be the most promising low-cost, thin-film photovoltaic material for terrestrial applications. Significant progress has been made during the past several years, and thin-film CdTe solar cells of > 1 cm² area with conversion efficiencies higher than 12% have been prepared by several techniques. Thin-film CdTe photovoltaic modules with 10% efficiency have also been produced. They are of the heterojuntion configuration using a transparent conducting semiconductor (TCS) as the window and p-CdTe as the absorber. In this paper, the potential window materials for thin-film CdTe solar cells are discussed. Thus far, cadmium sulphide (CdS) with a bandgap energy of 2.42 eV at room temperature has been found to be best suited for efficient CdTe solar cells. the deposition techniques for p-CdTe films capable of producing efficient solar cells, including close-spaced sublimation (CSS), electrodeposition, screen printing and spraying, are briefly reviewed, and the characteristics of the resulting solar cells are discussed. It is concluded that the efficiency of thin-film CdTe solar cells can be increased to 18-19% in the near-term, leading to 15-16.5% efficient modules.