Galvanostatically deposited Cd0.7Fe0.3Se electrode for solar cell application

Thin films of Cd
_0.7
Fe
_0.3
Se have been prepared on stainless steel and fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) coated glass substrates using electrodeposition technique. Double distilled water containing precursors of Cd, Fe and Se are used with ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid (EDTA) disodium salt as a complexing agent to obtain good quality deposits by controlling the rate of reactions. The different preparative parameters like concentration of bath, deposition time, pH of the bath and Fe content in the bath have been optimized by photoelectrochemical (PEC) technique in order to get good quality thin films. Different techniques have been used to characterize electrodeposited Cd
_0.7
Fe
_0.3
Se thin films. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis reveals that the films Cd
_0.7
Fe
_0.3
Se are polycrystalline in nature with crystallite size of 282 Å for the films deposited with optimized preparative parameters. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) study reveals that all grains uniformly distributed over the surface of stainless steel substrate indicates well defined growth of polycrystalline Cd
_0.7
Fe
_0.3
Se material. Optical absorption shows the direct band gap energy of 1.84 eV. Photoelectrochemical (PEC) solar cell study shows the films of Cd
_0.7
Fe
_0.3
Se are more photosensitive.