Influence of Cu_xS back contact on CdTe thin film solar cells

We present a detailed study on CuxS polycrystalline thin films prepared by chemical bath method and utilized as back contact material for CdTe solar cells.The characteristics of the films deposited on Si-substrate are studied by XRD.The results show that as-deposited CuxS thin film is in an amorphous phase while after annealing,samples are in polycrystalline phases with increasing temperature.The thickness of CuxS thin films has great impact on the performance of CdS/CdTe solar cells.When the thickness of the film is about 75 nm the performance of CdS/CdTe thin film solar cells is found to be the best.The energy conversion efficiency can be higher than 12.19%,the filling factor is higher than 68.82% and the open-circuit voltage is more than 820 mV.     

Study of Back Contacts for CdTe Solar Cells

ZnTe/ZnTe:Cu layer is used as a complex back contact.The parmeters of CdTe solar cells with and without the complex back contacts are compared.The effects of un-doped layer thickness,doped concentration and post-deposition annealing temperature of the complex layer on solar cells preformance are investigated.The results show that ZnTe/ZnTe:Cu layer can improve back contacts and largely increase the conversion efficiency of CdTe solar cells.Un-doped layer and post-deposition annealing of high temperature can increase open voltage.Using the complex back contact,a small CdTe cell with fill factor of 73.14% and conversion efficiency of 12.93% is obtained.     

A study on the key factors affecting the electronic properties of monocrystalline silicon solar cells

The model of monocrystalline silicon solar cells is established,and the effects of wafer parameters,such as the p-Si（100） substrate thickness,the defect density,and the doping concentration,on the electronic properties of monocrystalline silicon solar cells are analyzed.The results indicate that the solar cells with an Al back-surface-field will have good electronic properties when the wafers meet the following three conditions：（i） the defect density is less than 1.0×1011 cm^-3;（ii） the doping concentration is from 5×10^15 cm^-3 to 1×10^17 cm^-3,i.e.the bulk resistivity is from 0.5 Ω·cm to 10 Ω·cm;（iii） the cells substrate thickness is in the range of 100 μm to 200 μm.     

Characteristics of Polyaniline/Si Heterojunction Solar Cell By Electrochemical Dye Sensitization

Using the electrochemical polymerization dye sensitization （ECDS） method, polyaniline （PAn）, which is used as top region material in solar cells, is sensitized with direct blue dye（DS）, and sensitized Al grid/DS-PAn/n-Si/Al heterojunction solar cells is prepared by ECDS. Influences of the ECDS on the absorption spectrum and the junction characteristics of the solar cell were discussed, and the output characteristics were measured. The results show that the absorption spectrum of the sensitized PAn films is much wider and stronger in Vis-range; the diode quality factor is about 6.3 and the height of latent barrier potential of p-n junction is 0.89 eV; the short-circuit current and the conversion efficiency of sensitized DS- PAn/Si heterojunction solar cells are greatly improved, which the short-circuit current can increase 6 times, the fill factor is 57% and the efficiency can reach 1.42 % under the illumination of 37.2 W/m^2 , respectively.     

Numerical modeling of ZnSnO/CZTS based solar cells

Numerical simulation has been performed to improve the performance of Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) solar cells by replacing CdS with Zn1–xSnxO buffer layer. The influences of thickness, donor concentration and defect density of buffer layers on the performance of CZTS solar cells were investigated. It has been found that Zn1–xSnxO buffer layer for Sn content of 0.20 is better for CZTS solar cell. A higher efficiency can be achieved with thinner buffer layer. The optimized solar cell demonstrated a maximum power conversion efficiency of 13%.     

Nano-sphere surface arrays based on GaAs solar cells

In this paper,we present our efforts on simulating and analyzing the effect of two-dimensional nano-sphere surface array on the characteristic of GaAs solar cells.Based on the scattering and diffraction theory of the photonic crystals,the simulation results show that the distance of adjacent nano-spheres(D)has the pronounced influence on the conversion efficiency and exhibits much poor tolerance,the absolutely conversion efficiency is reduced by exceeding of 2%as the D varies from 0 to 1μm,in addition,the lower conversion efficiency(<18%)is exhibited and almost remains unaltered when the D is of>2μm.The radius(R)of nano-spheres demonstrates much great tolerance.For D=0,the solar cells exhibit high conversion efficiency(>20%)and the efficiency is only varied by less than 1%when R is varied in a very wide region of 0.3-1.2μm.One can also find out that there is good tolerance for efficiency around the optimal value of refractive index and there is only about 0.2%decrease in final cell efficiency for around±24%variation in the optimal values,which implys that it does not demand high precision processing equipment and the whole nano-sphere array could be fully complemented using self-assembled chemical methods.     

Effects of defect states on the performance of perovskite solar cells

We built an ideal perovskite solar cell model and investigated the effects of defect states on the solar cell''s performance. The verities of defect states with a different energy level in the band gap and those in the absorption layer CH₃NH₃PbI₃ (MAPbI₃), the interface between the buffer layer/MAPbI₃, and the interface between the hole transport material (HTM) and MAPbI₃, were studied. We have quantitatively analyzed these effects on perovskite solar cells'' performance parameters. They are open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current, fill factor, and photoelectric conversion efficiency. We found that the performances of perovskite solar cells change worse with defect state density increasing, but when defect state density is lower than 10¹⁶ cm^-3, the effects are small. Defect states in the absorption layer have much larger effects than those in the adjacent interface layers. The perovskite solar cells have better performance as its working temperature is reduced. When the thickness of MAPbI₃ is about 0.3 μm, perovskite solar cells show better comprehensive performance, while the thickness 0.05 μm for Spiro-OMeTAD is enough.     

Effects of defect states on the performance of CuInGaSe2 solar cells

Device modeling has been carried out to investigate the effects of defect states on the performance of ideal CulnGaSe2 （CIGS） thin film solar cells theoretically. The varieties of defect states （location in the band gap and densities） in absorption layer CIGS and in buffer layer CdS were examined. The performance parameters： open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current, fill factor, and photoelectric conversion efficiency for different defect states were quantitatively analyzed. We found that defect states always harm the performance of CIGS solar cells, but when defect state density is less than 10 14 cm-3 in CIGS or less than 10 18 cm-3 in CdS, defect states have little effect on the performances. When defect states are located in the middle of the band gap, they are more harmful. The effects of temperature and thickness are also considered. We found that CIGS solar cells have optimal performance at about 170 K and 2 μm of CIGS is enough for solar light absorption.     

Interfacial engineering of printable bottom back metal electrodes for full-solution processed flexible organic solar cells

Printing of metal bottom back electrodes of flexible organic solar cells (FOSCs) at low temperature is of great significance to realize the full-solution fabrication technology.However,this has been difficult to achieve because often the interfacial properties of those printed electrodes,including conductivity,roughness,work function,optical and mechanical flexibility,cannot meet the device requirement at the same time.In this work,we fabricate printed Ag and Cu bottom back cathodes by a low-temperature solution technique named polymer-assisted metal deposition (PAMD) on flexible PET substrates.Branched polyethylenimine (PEI) and ZnO thin films are used as the interface modification layers (IMLs) of these cathodes.Detailed experimental studies on the electrical,mechanical,and morphological properties,and simulation study on the optical properties of these IMLs are carried out to understand and optimize the interface of printed cathodes.We demonstrate that the highest power conversion efficiency over 3.0％ can be achieved from a full-solution processed OFSC with the device structure being PAMDAg/PEI/P3HT:PC61BM/PH1000.This device also acquires remarkable stability upon repeating bending tests.     

InAs量子点尺寸和间距对GaInP/GaAs/GaInAs/Ge多结叠层电池的影响

A metamorphic GaInP/GaAs/GaInAs/Ge multi-junction solar cell with InAs quantum dots is investigated, and the analytical expression of the energy conversion efficiency on the multi-junction tandem solar cell is derived using the detailed balance principle and the Kronig-Penney model.The influences of interdot distance, quantum-dot size and the intermediate band location on the energy conversion efficiency are studied.This shows that the maximum efficiency,as a function of quantum-dot size and distance,is about 60.15%under the maximum concentration for only one InAs/GaAs subcell,and is even up to 39.69%for the overall cell.In addition,other efficiency factors such as current mismatch,the formation of a quasicontinuum conduction band and concentrated light are examined.     

清洗工艺对锗外延片表面点状缺陷的影响

锗外延片表面的雾、水印及点状缺陷等会影响太阳电池的性能和成品率,其中点状缺陷出现的比例最高。研究了锗抛光片清洗工艺对外延片表面点状缺陷的影响,获得了无点状缺陷、低粗糙度及高表面质量的锗单晶片。采用厚度为175μm p型<100>锗单面抛光片进行清洗试验,研究了SC-1溶液的不同清洗时间、清洗温度和去离子水冲洗温度对锗抛光片外延后点状缺陷的影响,分析了表面SiO_2残留和锗片表面粗糙度对外延片表面点状缺陷的影响。结果表明点状缺陷主要是由于锗单晶抛光片表面沾污没有彻底清洗干净以及清洗过程中产生新的缺陷造成的。采用氢氟酸溶液浸泡、SC-1溶液低温短时间清洗结合低温去离子水冲洗后的锗抛光片进行外延,用其制备的太阳电池光电转换效率由原来的25%提高到31%。     

DC‐sputtered ZnO:Al as transparent conductive oxide for silicon heterojunction solar cells with µc‐Si:H emitter

Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells are highly interesting, because of their high efficiency and low cost fabrication. So far, the most applied transparent conductive oxide (TCO) is indium tin oxide (ITO). The replacement of ITO with cheaper, more abundant and environmental friendly material with texturing capability is a promising way to reduce the production cost of the future SHJ solar cells. Here, we report on the fabrication of the SHJ solar cells with direct current‐sputtered aluminum‐doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Al) as an alternative TCO. Furthermore, we address several important differences between ITO and the ZnO:Al layers including a high Schottky barrier at the emitter/ZnO:Al interface and a high intrinsic resistivity of the ZnO:Al layers. To overcome the high Schottky barrier, we suggest employing micro‐crystalline silicon (µc‐Si:H) emitter, which also improves temperature threshold and passivation of the solar cell precursor. In addition, we report on the extensive studies of the effect of the ZnO:Al deposition parameters including layer thickness, oxygen flow, power density and temperature on the electrical properties of the fabricated SHJ solar cells. Finally, the results of our study indicate that the ZnO:Al deposition parameters significantly affect the electrical properties of the obtained solar cell. By understanding and fine‐tuning all these parameters, a high conversion efficiency of 19.2% on flat wafer (small area (5 × 5 mm²) and without any front metal grid) is achieved. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hemisphere-shaped silicon crystal wafers obtained by plastic deformation and preparation of their solar cells

Hemisphere-shaped crystal wafers can be prepared by the plastic deformation of Si crystal wafers. To obtain hemispherical Si wafers, graphite convex and concave dies were used. A Si wafer was set between dies and pressed at high temperatures. The Si wafer was pressed by an overweight of 200 N at various temperatures. The deformation regions in which well-shaped (100) and (111) wafers can be obtained by plastic deformation were determined using parameters of thickness and temperature. In order to demonstrate that the shaped wafers are of sufficiently high quality to be used in the preparation of devices, solar cells were fabricated using the hemispherical Si wafers pressed at 1,120°C and 1,200°C. The conversion efficiency of the hemispherical solar cells is 8.5–11.5%. It was clarified from the conversion efficiency of solar cells that the quality of the shaped crystal wafers can be improved by a proper annealing process. Thus, the hemispherical shaped wafers are of high quality to be used in the preparation of devices.     

高效硅基异质结太阳能电池的模拟

a-Si:H/c-Si异质结太阳能电池的基本参数,如层厚度、掺杂浓度、a-Si:H/c-Si界面缺陷、功函数等是影响载流子传输特性和电池效率的关键因素。在本文中,利用AFORS-HET程序,研究了这些参数与a-Si:H/c-Si电池的性能的关联性。最后,具有TCO/n-a-Si:H/i-a-Si:H/p-c-Si/p -a-Si:H/Ag结构的太阳能电池的最优化性能被获得,其光电转换效率为27.07%（VOC: 749 mV, JSC: 42.86 mA/cm2, FF: 84.33%）。深入地了解异质结电池的输运特性,对进一步提高电池的效率有很大的帮助,同时对实际太阳能电池的制造也能提供有益的指导。     

Demonstration of electrical performance of QGBF polysilicon solar cell structure

Small-area p/n junction photodiodes have been fabricated on Wacker polysilicon material using the novel concept of quasi-grain-boundary-free (QGBF) solar cells. The use of small-area structures simulates the predominance of grain-boundary recombination in determining the conversion efficiency in small-grain polysilicon solar cells. The electrical performance of the QGBF test photodiodes is shown to be comparable to single crystal photodiodes fabricated on the same wafer.     

A Simple Way to Simultaneously Release the Interface Stress and Realize the Inner Encapsulation for Highly Efficient and Stable Perovskite Solar Cells

The mixed halide perovskites have become famous for their outstanding photoelectric conversion efficiency among new‐generation solar cells. Unfortunately, for perovskites, little effort is focused on stress engineering, which should be emphasized for highly efficient solar cells like GaAs. Herein, polystyrene (PS) is introduced into the perovskite solar cells as the buffer layer between the SnO₂ and perovskite, which can release the residual stress in the perovskite during annealing because of its low glass transition temperature. The stress‐free perovskite has less recombination, larger lattices, and a lower ion migration tendency, which significantly improves the cell's efficiency and device stability. Furthermore, the so‐called inner‐encapsulated perovskite solar cells are fabricated with another PS capping layer on the top of perovskite. As high as a 21.89% photoelectric conversion efficiency (PCE) with a steady‐state PCE of 21.5% is achieved, suggesting that the stress‐free cell can retain almost 97% of its initial efficiency after 5 days of “day cycle” stability testing.     

原子层沉积氧化铝薄膜对多晶太阳能电池表面钝化的影响

A stack of Al2O3/SiNx dual layer was applied for the back side surface passivation of p-type multi-crystalline silicon solar cells, with laser-opened line metal contacts, forming a local aluminum back surface field （local Al-BSF） structure. A slight amount of Al2O3, wrapping around to the front side of the wafer during the thermal atomic layer deposition process, was found to have a negative influence on cell performance. The different process flow was found to lead to a different cell performance, because of the Al2O3 wrapping around the front surface. The best cell performance, with an absolute efficiency gain of about 0.6% compared with the normal full Al-BSF structure solar cell, was achieved when the Al2O3 layer was deposited after the front surface of the wafer had been covered by a SiNx layer. We discuss the possible reasons for this phenomenon, and propose three explanations as the Ag paste, being hindered from firing through the front passivation layer, degraded the SiNx passivation effect and the Al2O3 induced an inversion effect on the front surface. Characterization methods like internal quantum efficiency and contact resistance scanning were used to assist our understanding of the underlying mechanisms.     

Performance of bifacial HIT solar cells on n-type silicon substrates

The performance of amorphous silicon(a-Si:H) /crystalline silicon(c-Si) heterojunction is studied,and the effects of the emitter layer thickness,doping concentration,intrinsic layer thickness,back heavily-doped n layer,interface state and band offset on the optical and electrical performance of bifacial heterojunction with intrinsic thin-layer(HIT) solar cells on ntype silicon substrates are discussed.It is found that the HIT solar cells on n-type substrates can obtain a higher conversion efficiency than th...     

The dependence of the photocurrent of MIS solar cells on thickness of Schottky barrier metals

The thickness of the barrier metals on the Schottky solar cells is very critical to the conversion efficiency. A theoretical calculation of the short circuit current of the Schottky barrier solar cells on applying Fuchs-Sondheimer's theory to calculate the electrical resistivity in thin metal films, and Handy's approach to calculate the series resistance on a given configuration of the contact grids shows that the optimum thickness which gives maximum short circuit current closely depends onthe intensity of the illuminating light and on the series resistance of the device. The optimum thickness shifts toward thicker film as the illuminating light or the series resistance increases. Fabrication of these devices on MIS solar cells indicates that the monitored optimum thickness satisfactorily agrees with the theoretical values.     

利用偏钨酸铵的DMF/水溶液旋涂热解制备WO3薄膜及其在钙钛矿太阳电池致密层中的应用

本文首次通过旋涂热解偏钨酸铵((NH₄)₆H₂W₁₂O₄₀)的DMF/水溶液成功制备了致密的三氧化钨(WO₃)薄膜, 系统研究了WO₃薄膜厚度及用异丙醇冲洗处理气相辅助溶液法制备的CH₃NH₃PbI₃薄膜对相应钙钛矿太阳电池光伏性能的影响. 结果表明, 使用厚度为62nmWO₃致密层的平板钙钛矿太阳电池获得了短路电流密度17.39 mA.cm_-2, 开路电压0.58 V, 填充因子0.57, 相应光电转化效率5.72%. 使用异丙醇冲洗CH₃NH₃PbI₃薄膜后, 相应太阳电池的光电转化效率由5.72 % 升高到7.04 %.