Effect of Fe-incorporation on photovoltaic characteristics of nano-structured CdSe thin films

[Display omitted] ► Effect of Fe incorporating on PEC properties of CdSe thin films. ► Efficiency is found improved from 0.50% to 1.48% with Fe incorporating in CdSe. ► EIS studies show that Fe incorporating in CdSe improves the performance PEC cells. The Fe-incorporated CdSe films are deposited on FTO-coated glass substrates by computerized spray pyrolysis technique. The Fe concentration is optimized by using photoelectrochemical (PEC) technique. The cell configurations CdSe/1M (Na2S+S+NaOH)/C and Fe:CdSe/1M (Na2S+S+NaOH)/C are used to study a wide range of photoelectrochemical characteristics including capacitance–voltage characteristics in dark, current–voltage characteristics in the dark and under illumination, photovoltaic power output and spectral response and to perform electrochemical impedance spectroscopy studies. The study reveals that the films exhibit n-type conductivity. Various parameters such as the junction ideality factor under illumination, series and shunt resistances, fill factor and efficiency are estimated for the PEC cell formed with CdSe and Fe-incorporated CdSe thin films. Band edges of Fe incorporated CdSe thin films are located. The best result obtained for conversion efficiency is 1.48% at 0.30mol% Fe, which is three times more than the one reported for pure CdSe (0.50%) material. The value of fill factor is found to be improved from 0.44 to 0.63 with Fe incorporating in CdSe thin films. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy studies show that incorporating of Fe into CdSe thin film improves the performance of resulting PEC cells. The utility of this work is in improving in efficiency of the PEC solar cell.