Unexpected Crystalline Structure Explains Mechanism of Long-Used Solar Cell Treatment and Hints That Further Materials Discoveries Await
For more than three decades, photovoltaic researchers have known that the addition of a single chemical — cadmium chloride — creates better-performing cadmium telluride solar cells. But they have not understood exactly why — until now. The answer has implications for materials science that stretch well beyond solar cells.are composed of a thin film of material, about 10–100 times thinner than a human hair.
Clearly, the addition of CdCl2 changed the interface in a crucial way. But further experiments could not resolve the interface’s structure down to the atomic level to explain why the CdCl2 treatment was so effective. This challenge is not unique to CdTe solar cells. Interfaces are notoriously difficult to study and understand at the atomic level, especially in cases of nonideal interfaces between materials that have different crystal structures.
To calculate the electronic structure of a CdTe solar cell — and thereby determine its charge collection — the researchers first needed to determine the atomic arrangement CdCl2 interface, which had never before been done for CdTe solar cells. To achieve this, the team implemented a structure prediction algorithm for interfaces. Thebegan with a random arrangement of atoms and then allowed them to settle, using a method called density functional theory to calculate the atomic forces.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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