Electrochemical Photovoltaic Cell with 6.9% Efficiency using Polycrystalline CdSe Grown by a Simple Liquid Metal-Vapour Reaction

Abstract

Research on II–VI semiconducting compounds during the last two decades has been motivated by possible device applications such as thin film transistors, photodetectors and solar energy converters. In particular, the direct gap n-type semiconductor CdSe, has remained the subject of studies aimed at developing efficient photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical cells. For the low-cost production of polycrystalline CdSe layers, many noteworthy methods have been employed, such as: vacuum deposition, spray pyrolysis, chemical bath deposition and electrodeposition [1–5]. The best reported performances of photoelectro-chemical cells using CdSe films obtained by these methods, in contact with an aqueous polysulfide electrolyte and under solar or simulated solar radiation, have varied between 5 and 7% [6,7].