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Chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film CdTe solar cells: the missing piece
The conversion efficiency of as-deposited, CdTe solar cells is poor and typically less than 5%. A CdCl(2) activation treatment increases this to up to 22%. Studies have shown that stacking faults (SFs) are removed and the grain boundaries (GBs) are decorated with chlorine. Thus, SF removal and devic...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8382740/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34426582 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25063-y |
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author | Hatton, Peter Watts, Michael J. Abbas, Ali Walls, John M. Smith, Roger Goddard, Pooja |
author_facet | Hatton, Peter Watts, Michael J. Abbas, Ali Walls, John M. Smith, Roger Goddard, Pooja |
author_sort | Hatton, Peter |
collection | PubMed |
description | The conversion efficiency of as-deposited, CdTe solar cells is poor and typically less than 5%. A CdCl(2) activation treatment increases this to up to 22%. Studies have shown that stacking faults (SFs) are removed and the grain boundaries (GBs) are decorated with chlorine. Thus, SF removal and device efficiency are strongly correlated but whether this is direct or indirect has not been established. Here we explain the passivation responsible for the increase in efficiency but also crucially elucidate the associated SF removal mechanism. The effect of chlorine on a model system containing a SF and two GBs is investigated using density functional theory. The proposed SF removal mechanisms are feasible at the 400 (∘)C treatment temperature. It is concluded that the efficiency increase is due to electronic effects in the GBs while SF removal is a by-product of the saturation of the GB with chlorine but is a key signal that sufficient chlorine is present for passivation to occur. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8382740 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83827402021-09-22 Chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film CdTe solar cells: the missing piece Hatton, Peter Watts, Michael J. Abbas, Ali Walls, John M. Smith, Roger Goddard, Pooja Nat Commun Article The conversion efficiency of as-deposited, CdTe solar cells is poor and typically less than 5%. A CdCl(2) activation treatment increases this to up to 22%. Studies have shown that stacking faults (SFs) are removed and the grain boundaries (GBs) are decorated with chlorine. Thus, SF removal and device efficiency are strongly correlated but whether this is direct or indirect has not been established. Here we explain the passivation responsible for the increase in efficiency but also crucially elucidate the associated SF removal mechanism. The effect of chlorine on a model system containing a SF and two GBs is investigated using density functional theory. The proposed SF removal mechanisms are feasible at the 400 (∘)C treatment temperature. It is concluded that the efficiency increase is due to electronic effects in the GBs while SF removal is a by-product of the saturation of the GB with chlorine but is a key signal that sufficient chlorine is present for passivation to occur. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-08-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8382740/ /pubmed/34426582 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25063-y Text en © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Hatton, Peter Watts, Michael J. Abbas, Ali Walls, John M. Smith, Roger Goddard, Pooja Chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film CdTe solar cells: the missing piece |
title | Chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film CdTe solar cells: the missing piece |
title_full | Chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film CdTe solar cells: the missing piece |
title_fullStr | Chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film CdTe solar cells: the missing piece |
title_full_unstemmed | Chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film CdTe solar cells: the missing piece |
title_short | Chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film CdTe solar cells: the missing piece |
title_sort | chlorine activated stacking fault removal mechanism in thin film cdte solar cells: the missing piece |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8382740/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34426582 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25063-y |
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