The Effect of CdTe Pattern on the Characteristics of Screen Printed CdS/CdTe Solar Cell

The influence of the CdTe width on the characteristics of screen printed CdS/CdTe solar cell was studied by making 14 cells whose CdTe widths ranged from 2 to 8 mm on a 5×10 cm2 glass substrate. As the CdTe width decreased, the short-circuit current density of the cell decreased and the fill factor (FF) increased as expected. However, the increase of the FF with the decrease of CdTe width was smaller than the result calculated by assuming the series resistance of a cell determined only by the resistance of CdS film. Therefore, other improvements such as reducing contact resistances between semiconductor films and electrodes may be necessary to get a higher value of FF. The maximum practical efficiency (ηp) was obtained at the CdTe width around 5 mm, so many cells having CdTe width of about 5 mm were produced using 5×10 cm2 glass substrates and the maximum ηp of 5.2% (intrinsic efficiency of 8.5%) was obtained.