Relevance of the PhD thesis
The growing interest in alternative and renewable sources of energy is caused due to limited traditional land resources. Semiconductor solar cells occupy a special place among alternative and renewable sources of energy. Here it is worth to pay attention to the photoelectric converters of the 2nd generation, which have already managed to demonstrate the competitiveness with silicon analogues.
In the first years of the 21st century is already managed to improve the technologies of obtaining and producing of solar modules based on cadmium telluride, where direct conversion of solar energy into electricity is carried out. CdTe-technology costs about 30% less than CIGS technology and 40% less than A-Si technology. Thus, the use of thin films solar cells based on CdTe can be achieved with the highest ratio of “efficiency/cost”. Thin film technology is simple, cheap and reproducible. CdTe forms advantageous heterojunctions with a variety of semiconductor materials, in particular with CdS. This is a very promising material for thin-film PV cells thanks to appropriate band gap and a high absorption coefficient of solar radiation. The real efficiency of solar cells based on the n-CdS / p-CdTe heterojunction in the “superstrate” structure has reached 20.4%. The predicted theoretical efficiency of such CdS/CdTe solar cells is 28-30%.
The subject of the PhD thesis is completely consistent with the topics of scientific projects of the Department of Physics and Chemistry of Solids. Physics and technology of thin semiconductor films is the most well-known scientific discipline, which is well developed at the Faculty of Physics and Technology.
The aim of the PhD thesis is: to study the surface morphology and growth mechanisms of thin-film heterostructured condensates on the basis of cadmium telluride; to analyze the dependence of cadmium telluride condensation from different technological parameters (substrate temperature, evaporation temperature, time of deposition) on monocrystalline and amorphous substrates; to investigate the optical and photovoltaic properties of thin film condensates for application in high-performance devices based on heterojunctions in electronics and solar energy converters.