Influence of surface treatments on CdSe thin films in photoelectro-chemical solar energy conversion

Photovoltaic performance of semiconductor-liquid junction solar cell using electro-codeposited thin filmn-CdSe is found to improve significantly by proper surface treatments. The solid state parameters of annealed films are calculated and compared with those of unannealed film-based cells. Chemical etching is found to improve short circuit current and fill factor whereas photoelectrochemical etching technique improves the stability of photoanode in polysulphide electrolyte. Annealing promotes incipient fusion of small crystallites, thus reducing the grain boundaries which are known to act as recombination centres for minority carriers and trapping centre for majority carriers. The conversion efficiency and stability are found to improve by chemical etching of the semiconductor layer because chemical etching pins Fermi level of CdSe photoanode and promotes exchange current density.