  Recent studies have investigated novel strategies to further improve the
limited Voc of CdTe solar cells via increased carrier lifetime and doping
density of CdTe thin films. Among various metal oxides, aluminum oxide (Al2O3)
is a promising passivation candidate, where the negatively charged Al2O3 layer
repels the minority carrier in CdTe and Al2O3 provides a chemically passivating
interface, increasing the carrier lifetime. Despite the continuing efforts, an
optimized back-contact architecture to improve the Voc while maintaining high
Jsc and FF is still under development. In this work, we report the design,
fabrication, and characterization of PERC-like CdTe solar cells, where an Al2O3
passivation layer is patterned using laser-beam lithography. Our process
enables reproducible patterning on a rough surface CdTe while maintaining the
size of the array in the design. Analysis of CdTe PERC devices (As-doped) shows
a notably different Voc trend compared to FF and Jsc, independent of the
patterned array structures used in this study. The subsurface electronic
structure of CdTe and the interplay between carrier selectivity and collection
of the patterned Al2O3 could be responsible for the observed PV
characteristics.
