Effects of the Au/CdTe back contact on IV and CV characteristics of Au/CdTe/CdS/TCO solar cells

A simple analytical theory is presented to explain the measured roll over and cross over behaviour of the IV characteristics of thin film CdTe solar cells. It involves a classical description of the CdS/CdTe junction and the CdTe/back contact structure and is extended with a new description of minority carrier current in the CdTe contact region. This extension is crucial in describing the light dependence of the forward IV curves, and hence cross over. The same model also explains the measured CV curves. It is shown that analysis of the capacitance measurement can yield additional information about the doping density of CdTe in the vicinity of the contact. A relationship between the fill factor of the solar cell and the barrier height of the back contact is derived; this relation is useful as a new, practical criterion for the quality of the back contact. The results of this simple analytical model are confirmed by full numerical calculations of the de and ac characteristics. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.