Document Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
Summer 8-31-2016
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Engineering - (Ph.D.)
Department
Chemical, Biological and Pharmaceutical Engineering
First Advisor
Ken K. Chin
Second Advisor
Laurent Simon
Third Advisor
Alan E. Delahoy
Fourth Advisor
R. P. T. Tomkins.
Fifth Advisor
Xiaoyang Xu
Sixth Advisor
George E. Georgiou
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.
Recommended Citation
Liu, Guogen, "Processing of CdS/CdTe solar cell and the growth model of CdTe thin film" (2016). Dissertations. 88.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/dissertations/88
