The electrophoresis of thin film CdS/Cu2S solar cells

Electrophoretic deposition on metal, ion-plated plastic and conducting semiconductor oxide on glass anodes is reported. Solar cells were fabricated by adding a Cu2S layer by evaporation or by the well-known copper ion dip technique. Efficiencies up to 5% were achieved without an antireflection coating. Large-area films of CdS were fabricated and a 125 cm length of stainless steel foil was coated continuously to demonstrate that scaling up to mass production is feasible. The resistivity of the films was too high and never fell below 1000 ohm cm. More work is needed on the annealing and doping of the films to see whether this resistance can be lowered by one or two orders of magnitude so that efficient large-area solar cells can be produced.