Dependence of electro-optical properties on the deposition conditions of chemical bath deposited CdS thin films

Abstract

Lately, there has been a sharp increase in the publication of papers on chemical bath deposition of CdS thin films and related materials due to successful results obtained using this method to fabricate CdS thin‐film buffer layers for Formula ‐ and CdTe‐based polycrystalline thin‐film solar cells. Generally, these papers focus on previously proposed methods of studying film characteristics without a systematic study of the influence of deposition conditions on film characteristics. In this paper we present an exhaustive study of the chemical bath‐deposited CdS thin films electro‐optical properties dependence on deposition variables. We propose not only a set of conditions for obtaining CdS thin films by this method but additionally, suitable deposition process conditions for certain application requirements, such as buffer layers for thin‐film solar cells. The observed electro‐optical characteristics dependence on the deposition variables corroborates the chemical mechanism that we proposed previously for this process.