Pulsed laser induced ohmic back contact in CdTe solar cells

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Publication Type pre-print
School or College College of Engineering
Department Materials Science & Engineering
Creator Scarpulla, Michael
Other Author Simonds, Brian J.; Palekis, Vasilios; Van Devener, Brian; Ferekides, Christos
Title Pulsed laser induced ohmic back contact in CdTe solar cells
Date 2014-01-01
Description Creating an ohmic back contact has long been a problem for making efficient CdTe solar cells. Current devices utilize some combination of preferential chemical etching, buffer layer, and Cu doping with additional cost, time, and complexity added for each step. In this Letter, these processes are eschewed and replaced with a nanosecond pulsed ultraviolet laser treatment. It is shown that this treatment can eliminate the rollover effect seen in photovoltaic current-voltage (J-V) curves that is indicative of a non-ohmic back contact. Transfer length measurements show that a single UV laser pulse can reduce the specific contact resistivity by a factor of 24 versus untreated samples. X-Ray photoemission spectroscopy shows evidence of increased conductivity and of elemental Te created at the surface by laser pulses. Finally, finite element modeling is used to model the laser-sample interaction, which predicts both the temperature and the amounts of Cd and Te lost during a laser pulse.
Type Text
Publisher American Institute of Physics (AIP)
Volume 104
Issue 14
Language eng
Bibliographic Citation Simonds, B. J., Palekis, V., Van Devener, B., Ferekides, C., & Scarpulla, M. A. (2014). Pulsed laser induced ohmic back contact in CdTe solar cells. Applied Physics Letters, 104(14), 141604.
Rights Management (c)American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Simonds, B. J., Palekis, V., Van Devener, B., Ferekides, C., & Scarpulla, M. A. (2014). Pulsed laser induced ohmic back contact in CdTe solar cells. Applied Physics Letters, 104(14), 141604, 2014. and may be found at (URL/link for published article abstract).
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Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6rv3xt1
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