NANOSTRUCTURED CdTe SOLAR CELLS

Silicon photovoltaic cells are preferred in today's market conditions and technological implementations because they are cheap, abundant and the ongoing research has made them more and more efficient. In spite of that, manufacturing of such solar cells is very energy consuming, and silicon cells are very fragile and prone to breaking in the most mildly hostile situations. Hence, there is a lot of potential in the manufacture and use of flexible solar cells. Possible uses for this solar cell technology could be printing on glass, plastics, flexible cloth materials, and theoretically anything you could imagine. This will give endless opportunities for car makers to implement solar cells on their cars, and small gadgets would never have their battery depleted while it is sunny outside. The aim of this Project is to develop a complete CdTe based thin film flexible as well as based on glass substrates solar cells using nanostructured surfaces as the key point for reaching in a first step the levels of efficiency of standard commercial Si on glass based solar cells. The research and future production in Europe of this innovative approach would give an extraordinary input to build a solid background for the EU industry to further increase the industrial production of CdTe based thin film solar cells devices. Nanostructured surfaces will be utilized as one of the key technologies for improving the cell efficiency with the goal to reach the same efficiencies as for today’s standard commercial silicon based solar cells. This objective will be completed in three segments stages: the preparation of materials, the complete characterization of the materials, and the characterization of the final solar cells. To prepare the needed pn-junctions, standard processes as closed space sublimation and chemical bath deposition will be used. Further, the nanostructured surfaces will be prepared by modern approaches such as low energy ion and/or laser sputtering. Finally, the electroding will be made using approaches based on transparent conductive oxides (TCOs such as ZnO:Al, ITO, etc). Simulation tools will be required at each step in order to get the optimal geometry and dimensions of the solar cell. In the materials characterization phase, a complete set of classical and modern techniques will be used to characterize the materials: structural, compositional, electrical, optical, etc. Finally, the solar cells will be characterized in order to give feedback to the preparation process for improving their efficiency. The expected outcomes will be innovative nanostructured solar cells which will have an extraordinary benefit in the expected efficiency, and with a possibility of commercialization as a final step.