Doping with phosphorus reduces anion vacancy disorder in CdSeTe semiconductors enabling higher solar cell efficiency

Darius Kuciauskas (), Marco Nardone, Patrik Ščajev, Chun-Sheng Jiang, Dingyuan Lu and Rouin Farshchi
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Darius Kuciauskas: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Marco Nardone: Bowling Green State University
Patrik Ščajev: Vilnius University
Chun-Sheng Jiang: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Dingyuan Lu: First Solar, Santa Clara
Rouin Farshchi: First Solar, Santa Clara

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Doping is used in many pn junction devices, such as polycrystalline solar cells, to increase the strength of the junction field to assist charge carrier collection and thus partially mitigate nonradiative recombination losses. We demonstrate a different doping characteristic for inorganic solar cells: using dopants to reduce charge carrier trapping and electronic band tails. Alloying CdTe with Se to form CdSeTe semiconductor reduced recombination, but CdSeTe has more complex defect states which can limit further efficiency gains due to charge carrier trapping and trap-limited mobility. Doping CdSeTe with P (but not N, As, or Sb in this study) reduces band tails (Urbach energies) and lessens the impact of the near valence band trap states, with ambipolar mobilities improving to >50 cm2V−1s−1, fill factor increasing from 76% to 79%, and efficiencies increasing by 0.9% absolute. Simulations are used to show how such defect reduction improves performance in the radiative limit.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-63589-7

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