Nanostructures of CdS thin films prepared by various technologies for thin film solar cells

•High quality CdS films prepared by CSS, sputtering, CBD and electro-deposition.•Nanostructures of all CdS layers studied by TEM.•A kind of CdS multilayer used as window layers for thin film solar cells.

In this work, we reported TEM observations of several CdS thin films prepared by close space submission, sputtering, chemical bath deposition and electronic deposition technologies. The CdS layers prepared by close space submission and sputtering methods had larger grains (50–80 nm), while the CdS layers deposited by chemical bath had very small grains with the size of 5–10 nm. Electro deposited CdS yielded more like an epitaxial film. The optical and chemical properties showed good quality of CdS films prepared by all methods. In this work we proposed a suitable CdS multilayer structure to use it as a window layer in thin film solar cells.

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