Munshi, Amit Harenkumar, authorSampath, Walajabad, advisorKirkpatrick, Allan, committee memberSites, James, committee member2007-01-032007-01-032013http://hdl.handle.net/10217/79125CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells technology is one of the fastest growing carbon neutral energy sources in the world today. Manufacturing of CdS/CdTe solar modules is carried out at temperature in the range of 620°C under a vacuum of 40 millitorr using a Heated Pocket Deposition (HPD) system in the materials engineering laboratory. Since this system operates in vacuum, majority of the heat loss is due to thermal radiation. The concept here is to conserve the heat by reflecting the infrared radiation back into the deposition system thus increasing the thermal efficiency. Various metals may be used but calculations show that using a Gold thin film mirror can effectively reflect almost 97% of the incident radiation, thus conserving energy required for the manufacturing process. However, a phenomenon called thermal grooving or island formation inhibits its use. Thermal grooving occurs when the stress concentration at the grain boundaries causes grain separation. This phenomenon is observed in thin gold films that are exposed to a temperature in excess of 350°C for over 3 to 5 hours. In this study, these films are exposed to temperature up to 620°C for cycles as long as 200 hours. The goal of this research is to explore the solutions for elimination of the phenomenon of thermal grooving and thus extract maximum life out of these thin gold films for conservation of heat. After carefully exploring literature on past research and conducting experiments it was found that within the range of the films that were tested, a 2000 A° film with a 150 A° of Indium underlay showed the best performance after thermal annealing and testing.born digitalmasters thesesengCopyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.cadmium telluride cadmium sulfideenergy conservationgoldindiumradiation shieldingthin filmsText