Abstract
Cadmium sulfide (CdS) thin films were deposited by thermal evaporation with different substrate temperatures in order to study the influence of this parameter on CdS thin film properties. The investigated substrate temperatures are ranged from 25 degrees C to 300 degrees C. The film thickness is reduced with increasing the substrate temperature due to the re-evaporation phenomenon. Films prepared with low substrate temperatures have a cubic structure, while films prepared with higher temperature have a hexagonal one. An increase in the substrate temperature yields to highly transparent films with a large optical band gap. The best CdTe/CdS solar cells efficiency is achieved when using CdS buffer layer deposited at higher substrate temperature. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.