Photoelectrochemical (PEC) characteristics of CdTe film electrodes, known to have low
conversion efficiency when used in their pristine form, can be significantly enhanced by carefully
controlling their annealing temperature and cooling rate. Pristine CdTe films were electrodeposited
onto FTO/Glass substrates which were used as anodes. To reach films with optimal characteristics,
different applied preparation potentials were intentionally examined, namely 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 V, vs.
Ag/AgCl reference electrode (or 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 V NHE, respectively) where the 1.1 V applied
potential showed best PEC characteristics, and was thus followed unless otherwise stated. To study
effect of annealing temperature, three temperatures (150, 200 and 250 ºC) were attempted to enhance
PEC characteristics of the deposited films.  Effect of cooling rate, on PEC performance of preannealed
films,
was
also
studied
using
quenching
and
slow
cooling.

Films quenched from annealing
at all temperatures showed lower PEC performance compared to non-annealed electrode. Film
electrodes slowly cooled from 150 or 200 ºC show enhanced PEC performance compared to
quenched or non-annealed films.  Film slowly cooled from 250 ºC exhibited lower PEC performance
than the quenched counterpart. Annealing at 250 ºC lowered PEC for both quenching and slow
cooling. As a low band gap semiconductor film electrode, it is recommended to slowly cool CdTe
from low annealing temperatures, and to quickly cool them from relatively higher annealing
temperature. The annealing temperature and cooling rate effects on CdTe film PEC performance are
attributed to their effects on other physical characteristics, namely crystallinity, morphology and  chemical composition.  The optimal conversion efficiency (6.9%) was observed for film deposited at
1.1 V applied potential when annealed at 200 ºC and slowly cooled to room temperatur

Title

International Journal for Light and Electron Optics 2019

Publisher

Elsevier

Publisher Country

United Kingdom

Indexing

Thomson Reuters

Impact Factor

1.914

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

197

Year

2019

Pages

163220