Spectral and Temperature Properties of Solar Cells Based on Cadmium Telluride Thin-Films

This paper investigates the effect of CdTe layer thickness on the spectral characteristics and parameters of the Au/CdTe/CdS/ITO thin-film heterostructure using both modeling and experimental measurements. The thin-film solar cell was deposited by RF magnetron sputtering in vacuum. Numerical analysis in the SCAPS-1D simulation environment enabled the evaluation of the dependencies: efficiency, short-circuit current density, and open-circuit voltage on the wavelength spectrum and absorber layer thickness. It was shown that increasing the absorber layer thickness to 3-4 µm promotes the growth of both current density and open-circuit voltage, which is consistent with experimental measurements. The obtained temperature dependencies indicate a decrease in efficiency with increasing temperature under both monochromatic spectra and solar illumination, with the temperature dependencies of relative efficiency under monochromatic and direct solar illumination being nearly identical.