Enhancement of Conversion Efficiency of CdS-CdTe Photovoltaic Cell Sandwiching Intrinsic CdTe Layer between Window and Absorber Layers

An ultra-thin Cadmium Sulphide (CdS)- Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) photovoltaic cell has been designed incorporating an intrinsic layer (i-CdTe) and p+-CdTe layer as a back surface field (BSF) to achieve high conversion efficiency. The optimized thickness of the proposed photovoltaic cell is only 1.9 μm. The conversion efficiency of the proposed cell increased noticeably with introducing a CdTe intrinsic layer. It is found that with the increase of thickness of intrinsic layer, the conversion efficiency increased. At a solar irradiance of AM 1.5, we achieved open circuit voltage (Voc) of 0.93 V, short circuit current density (Jsc) of 47.52 mA/cm2, the maximum power of 36.91 mW/cm2and fill factor (FF) of 83.98%. The overall conversion efficiency of the proposed cell structure is achieved as 31%.