The Pivotal Role of Thermal Annealing of Cadmium Telluride Thin Film in Optimizing the Performance of CdTe/Si Solar Cells

Abstract

The main focus of this framework is the preparation of CdTe nanocrystalline thin films (~120 nm) on single crystal p-Si wafers (270 μm) with Miller index (100) using thermal evaporation. Then, the In/n-CdTe/p-Si/Al solar cell was successfully fabricated. The dark I–V characteristics for the fabricated solar cell have been determined in range of 300–375 K and an applied voltage range of − 2 to 2 V. The fabricated solar cell's behavior was thoroughly explained. As a result, the important parameters for the fabricated solar cell such as the rectification ratio ${\text{RR}}$, the junction resistance $R_{{\text{J}}}$, ideality factor of solar cell n, the shunt resistance $R_{{{\text{sh}}}}$, the series resistance $R_{{\text{s}}}$, the barrier height created at the interface between the CdTe thin film and the p-Si wafer $\phi_{b}$, the energy of trap level $E_{{\text{t}}}$ and the activation energy of carriers’s recombination in the depletion region $\Delta E$ were determined. Finally, the Poole–Frenkel $\beta_{{{\text{PF}}}}$ and Schottky $\beta_{{\text{S}}}$ parameters were computed.