Pulsed non-melt laser annealing (NLA) has been used for the first time to modify near-surface defects and related junction properties in Cu(In,Ga)Se-2 (CIGS) solar cells. CIGS films deposited on Mo/glass substrates were annealed using a 25 ns pulsed 248 nm laser beam at selected laser energy density in the range 20-60 mJ/cm(2) and pulse number in the range 5-20 pulses. XRD peak narrowing and SEM surface feature size increase suggest near-surface structure changes. Dual-beam optical modulation (DBOM) and Hall-effect measurements indicate NLA treatment increases the effective carrier lifetime and mobility along with the sheet resistance. In addition, several annealed CdS/CIGS films processed by NLA were fabricated into solar cells and characterized by photo- and dark-J-V and quantum efficiency (QE) measurements. The results show significant improvement in the overall cell performance when compared to unannealed cells. The results suggest that an optimal NLA energy density and pulse number for a 25 ns pulse width are approximately 30 mJ/cm(2) and 5 pulses, respectively. The NLA results reveal that overall cell efficiency of a cell processed from unannealed film increased from 7.69% to 13.41% and 12.22% after annealing 2 different samples at the best condition prior to device processing. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.