The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Processing of CdS/CdTe solar cell and the growth model of CdTe thin film
Author:	Liu, Guogen
View Online:	njit-etd2016-096 (xviii, 105 pages ~ 5.7 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Chemical, Biological and Pharmaceutical Engineering
Degree:	Doctor of Philosophy
Program:	Chemical Engineering
Document Type:	Dissertation
Advisory Committee:	Chin, Ken K. (Committee co-chair) Simon, Laurent (Committee co-chair) Delahoy, Alan E. (Committee member) Tomkins, R. P. T. (Committee member) Xu, Xiaoyang (Committee member) Georgiou, George E. (Committee member)
Date:	2016-08
Keywords:	CdS/CtTe Solar cell Growth model CSS CBD CdTe thin film
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Cadmium telluride is the only thin film photovoltaic (PV) technology to surpass crystalline silicon PV in the cost. The most common CdTe solar cells consist of a simple p-n heterojunction structure containing a p-doped CdTe layer and n-doped cadmium sulfide (CdS) layer, which acts as a window layer. Cadmium Sulfide (CdS) thin films are often deposited on glass substrates coated with TCO layers by the close-spaced sublimation (CSS) or sputter techniques in industrial because of in-line production integration. It is seldom reported that CdS is deposited by the chemical bath deposition (CBD) batch process. The bottleneck of CBD for commercial application is its low production rate and waste water treatment. This dissertation reports how to produce different thickness large area (100cm2) CdS thin film by CBD. The influence of the solution temperature and concentration on the thickness of CdS is investigated. This dissertation also reports a growth model for CdTe deposition including diffusion limited and sublimation limited. The model was consistent with experimental observations and showed very good agreement over a range of operating conditions.