Regular paper

Design of a high efficiency CdS/CdTe solar cell with optimized step doping, film thickness, and carrier lifetime of the absorption layer

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering, Imam Reza International University, Mashhad, Iran
² Department of Electrical Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran

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Received: 1 September 2014
Revised: 29 October 2014

Abstract

A high-efficiency CdS/CdTe solar cell with step doped absorber layer, optimized back surface field layer, and long carrier lifetime in the absorption layer was designed. At first, The CdS/CdTe reference cell is simulated and compared with previous experimental data. In order to obtain the highest efficiency, the thickness and step doping of the absorber and back surface field layer were optimized. In addition, the effect of carrier lifetime variation in the CdTe layer on the conversion efficiency of CdTe cell was investigated. Compared with reference cell, Efficiency enhancement of the proposed structure was 4.44%. Under global AM 1.5 conditions, the optimized cell structure had an open-circuit voltage of 0.987 V, a short-circuit current density of 27.9 mA/cm2 and a fill factor of 82.4%, corresponding to a total area conversion efficiency of 22.76%.