Characterization of Tellurium as a Back Contact for CdTe Solar Cells

CdTe solar cells currently use a hetero-junction design allowing for ideal band alignment engineering. The back contact has often been a source of CdTe performance limitations due to the formation of a barrier at the back interface. Tellurium has been studied as a possible high quality back contact to CdTe. Temperature dependent current density-voltage measurements and x-ray and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy were carried out in order to approximate offsets at the CdTe/Te interface.