TY  - EJOU
AU  - Gu, Yuzhe 
AU  - Wang, Wenwu 
AU  - Zeng, Guanggen 
AU  - Hao, Xia 
AU  - Wu, Lili 
AU  - Zhang, Jingquan 

TI  - Attempting Doping Activation via Rapid Thermal Annealing in As-Doped Polycrystalline CdSeTe Solar Cells
T2  - Chalcogenide Letters

PY  - 2026
VL  - 23
IS  - 3
SN  - 1584-8663

AB  - Doping the absorber layer is a critical process for enhancing the performance of polycrystalline CdSeTe solar cells. Replacing traditional Cu doping with Group V dopants offers a pathway to fabricate devices with improved efficiency and stability. However, the dopant activation rate in polycrystalline structures remains low, typically only a few percent. While rapid thermal annealing (RTA) has been successfully employed to achieve high activation rates in single-crystal CdTe devices, its application to polycrystalline CdSeTe solar cells has been scarcely reported. In this study, we systematically applied multi-step annealing to investigate the dopant activation of <i>in-situ</i> As-doped polycrystalline CdSeTe devices. Our findings reveal that polycrystalline devices exhibit significantly lower thermal tolerance than their single-crystal counterparts, sustaining only short-duration annealing at 500°C. Furthermore, although Cl diffusion during RTA can degrade device performance, we observed that trace amounts of CdCl<sub>2</sub> vapor can help stabilize device efficiency.
KW  - CdTe; solar cells; As doping; activation; rapid thermal annealing

DO  - 10.32604/cl.2026.079159