Electrical contacts for II-VI semiconducting devices

High resistivity II-VI semiconductors in general and CdTe and its associated materials like CdZnTe and CdMnTe in particular are suffering from ohmic contacting problem due to their high electron affinity and consequently large work function. Ni, Au, Pt and Pd have large work function and have possibility to match with the above materials. However, except Ni other materials have problems in large-scale commercial applications. In order to overcome the ohmic contacting problem to these semiconductors the following studies has been conducted in the text of the present paper. These are: (i) Work function engineering to modulate the work function through combination materials like, Cu, Au, Mo, W and Co. (ii) Introduction of a charge diluting intermediate semiconducting layer media in between the metal and CdTe to neutralize the bound polarized charges. These two aspects were applied in case of thin film CdTe-CdS solar cells to evaluate their contacting performances and their influences in solar cell parameters. Both cell performances and the contact characteristics of these contacting technologies were studied at depth and indicated their applicability in semiconducting devices. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.