U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

PUBLICATIONS

Local measurements of photocurrent and band gap in CdTe solar cells

Published

Author(s)

Yohan Yoon, Jungseok Chae, Aaron M. Katzenmeyer, Heayoung Yoon, Joshua D. Schumacher, Sang M. An, Andrea Centrone, Nikolai B. Zhitenev

Abstract

Polycrystalline thin film technology has shown great promise for low cost, high efficiency photovoltaics. To further increase the power efficiency, a firm understanding of microstructural properties of the devices is required. In this work, we investigate the inhomogeneous electrical and optical properties using local excitation techniques that generate excess carriers by a near-field light illumination or by a focused electron beam irradiation. The spatially resolved photocurrent images of n-CdS / p-CdTe devices obtained by both techniques show high carrier collection efficiencies at grain boundaries. A novel and complementary technique, photothermal induced resonance (PTIR), is also used to obtain absorption spectra and maps in the near-field over a broad range of wavelengths. In PTIR a wavelength tunable pulsed laser is used in combination with an atomic force microscope tip to detect the local thermal expansion induced by light absorption. Sub-micrometer thick lamella samples of CdTe solar cells are measured, and the variation of local band-gap is analyzed. We discuss the resolution and the sensitivity of the techniques in the range of photon energies close to the band gap.
Proceedings Title
31st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition(EU PVSEC 2015)
Conference Dates
September 14-18, 2015
Conference Location
Hamburg
Pub Type
Conferences

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

photothermal induced resonance (PTIR), CdTe solar cells, band-gap, scanning photocurrent microscopy (SPCM), near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM)
Alternative energy, Energy efficiency, Information technology, Materials, Image and signal processing and Optical physics and communications

Citation

Yoon, Y. , Chae, J. , Katzenmeyer, A. , Yoon, H. , Schumacher, J. , An, S. , Centrone, A. and Zhitenev, N. (2017), Local measurements of photocurrent and band gap in CdTe solar cells, 31st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition(EU PVSEC 2015), Hamburg, -1, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=919277 (Accessed April 23, 2024)

Created September 25, 2017