Determination of the minority carrier diffusion length of SnS using electro-optical measurements

The minority carrier diffusion length of the “absorber layer” in a solar cell is generally accepted to be one of the most important parameters that govern the performance of a solar cell device. In this work, thin films of SnS have been thermally evaporated onto cadmium sulphide/indium tin oxide/glass substrates, to fabricate heterojunction solar cell devices. The minority carrier diffusion length was determined for the first time for SnS layers using spectral response measurements in conjunction with optical absorption coefficient versus wavelength measurements. The minority carrier diffusion length was determined to be in the range 0.18–0.23 µm for the SnS/CdS devices investigated in this work.