Preparation and characterization of pulsed laser deposited CdTe thin films at higher FTO substrate temperature and in Ar + O2 atmosphere

•CdTe films were deposited by PLD at high substrate temperatures (400 °C, 550 °C).•CdTe films were achieved under the atmosphere (1.2 Torr) of Ar mixed with O2.•Deposited CdTe films were cubic phase and had strong (1 0 0) preferred orientation.•Scanning electron microscope (SEM) showed an average grain size of 0.3–0.6 μm.•The ultra-thin film (CdS/PLD-CdTe) solar cell with efficiency of 6.68% was made.

Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is one of the promising techniques for depositing cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin films. It has been reported that PLD CdTe thin films were almost deposited at the lower substrate temperatures (<300 °C) under vacuum conditions. However, the poor crystallinity of CdTe films prepared in this way renders them not conducive to the preparation of high-efficiency CdTe solar cells. To obtain high-efficiency solar cell devices, better crystallinity and more suitable grain size are needed, which requires the CdTe layer to be deposited by PLD at high substrate temperatures (>400 °C). In this paper, CdTe layers were deposited by PLD (KrF, λ = 248 nm, 10 Hz) at different higher substrate temperatures (Ts). Excellent performance of CdTe films was achieved at higher substrate temperatures (400 °C, 550 °C) under an atmosphere of Ar mixed with O2 (1.2 Torr). X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed the formation of CdTe cubic phase with a strong (1 0 0) preferential orientation at all substrates temperatures on 60 mJ laser energy. The optical properties of CdTe were investigated, and the band gaps of CdTe films were 1.51 eV and 1.49 eV at substrate temperatures of 400 °C and 550 °C, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed an average grain size of 0.3–0.6 μm. Thus, under these conditions of the atmosphere of Ar + O2 (15 Torr) and at the relatively high Ts (500 °C), an thin-film (FTO/PLD-CdS (100 nm)/PLD-CdTe (~1.5 μm)/HgTe: Cu/Ag) solar cell with an efficiency of 6.68% was fabricated.