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Updated: Jun 28, 2026

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Effect of copassivation of Cl and Cu on CdTe grain boundaries
Lixin Zhang1, Juarez L F Da Silva, Jingbo Li
1National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA.
Abstract:
Using a first-principles method, we investigate the structural and electronic properties of grain boundaries (GBs) in polycrystalline CdTe and the effects of copassivation of elements with far distinct electronegativities. Of the two types of GBs studied in this Letter, we find that the Cd core is less harmful to the carrier transport, but is difficult to passivate with impurities such as Cl and Cu, whereas the Te core creates a high defect density below the conduction band minimum, but all these levels can be removed by copassivation of Cl and Cu. Our analysis indicates that for most polycrystalline systems copassivation or multipassivation is required to passivate the GBs.
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