A detailed study of the series resistance effect on CdS/CdTe solar cells with Cu/Mo back contact

Abstract CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells with an area of 1 cm 2 were obtained and studied in detail. A ZnO buffer layer was deposited by reactive RF-sputtering on commercial ITO substrates. The CdS layer was grown on ZnO also by using RF-sputtering and CdTe thin film was deposited by conventional CSS technique. The chlorination of the solar cells is performed into Freon atmosphere at 400 °C. The CdTe thin film surface was chemically etched by using Br–Methanol solution. The back contact was deposited using RF-sputtering from a pure Cu and Mo targets. The procedure developed in this work led us to make systematically solar cells with good efficiency. However, the series resistance has a high value for an area of 1 cm 2 (22 Ω cm 2 ). In order to make more detailed study, the solar cell with an area of 1 cm 2 was divided in a 3 × 3 matrix. A good homogeneity in cell properties is observed and the efficiency increases to more than 11%, fundamentally through decreasing series resistance.