Role of front contact work function on amorphous silicon/crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cell performance

We investigated with numerical simulations the effects that a transparent conductive oxide front contact (TCO) can have on amorphous silicon/crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells. We found that, due to the extremely thin emitter layer used in this kind of device, the built-in potential available cannot be merely defined by the difference between the work function of the emitter and the base, but it depends on TCO work function as well. As a consequence, because of the correlation between built-in potential and open circuit voltage, the TCO work function strongly affects the solar cell performance. Simulation results show that a higher work function leads to the best device efficiency.     

Corrosion behavior of crystalline silicon solar cells

Corrosion behavior of crystalline silicon (C-Si) solar cells was investigated. For this purpose, three groups of cells were conducted with three kinds of aging test which cells setting in indoor environment (25 °C, 45% RH, 0– 2 months), cells immersing in moisture atmosphere (25 °C, 85% RH, 0– 240 h) and cells immersing in acetic acid atmosphere (25 °C, 85% RH, 0– 240 h). Subsequently the microstructure characteristic of the alumina paste layer (APL), rear electrode and soldered connection of cells and the corrosion production during aging test were analyzed and compared. The results show that the smooth oxide coating and looser structure were found in the APL of cell after aging test. In addition the discoloration and elements diffusion were found on the rear electrode. And the corrosion region expanded gradually from the edge to the center of soldered connection along the interface between Ag electrode and Sn₃₇Pb alloy. Thereafter, a model was put forward to try to explain the degradation mechanism of traditional photovoltaic (PV) modules during damp-heat (DH) test based on corrosion behavior of C-Si cells in this experiment.     

Terrestrial applications of amorphous silicon solar cells

Eighteen years have passed since the first industrial use of amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar cells for consumer products. At present, a-Si solar cells are entering a new age of use in power generating systems at private residences and other outdoor applications. This paper reviews recent advances in a-Si solar cells and their applications. Technological developments in the field of a-Si solar cells are discussed. Various applications and systems that take advantage of the a-Si solar cell are then introduced. Finally, future prospects are discussed, including a new concept called the GENESIS system for worldwide energy generation and transmission. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

晶体硅太阳能电池片老化特性研究

利用铝背场材料水煮特性的差异性,对4种铝背场多晶太阳能电池片的水煮特性进行了研究,详细分析了4种不同铝背场电池片老化特性(冷-热循环特性和湿热特性)与水煮特性的关系,同时也探讨了单晶与多晶电池片老化特性的差异性。结果表明:铝背场水煮特性较好的电池片表现出较好的湿热老化特性,但电池片的冷-热循环老化特性与其水煮特性无直接关系;单晶电池老化特性略优于多晶,且冷-热循环约40周后电池效率衰减基本稳定,湿热老化450~500 h后电池效率衰减基本稳定。     

Shunt types in crystalline silicon solar cells

Nine different types of shunt have been found in state‐of‐the‐art mono‐ and multicrystalline solar cells by lock‐in thermography and identified by SEM investigation (including EBIC), TEM and EDX. These shunts differ by the type of their I–V characteristics (linear or nonlinear) and by their physical origin. Six shunt types are process‐induced, and three are caused by grown‐in defects of the material. The most important process‐induced shunts are residues of the emitter at the edge of the cells, cracks, recombination sites at the cell edge, Schottky‐type shunts below grid lines, scratches, and aluminum particles at the surface. The material‐induced shunts are strong recombination sites at grown‐in defects (e.g., metal‐decorated small‐angle grain boundaries), grown‐in macroscopic Si₃N₄ inclusions, and inversion layers caused by microscopic SiC precipitates on grain boundaries crossing the wafer. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collection efficiency in amorphous silicon solar cells

A simple relation is presented for the field assisted collection efficiency for amorphous silicon solar cells, assuming zero geminate recombination. The ratio of the collection efficiency under forward biasing condition to short circuited condition is computed. It is found to agree reasonably well with the experimentally observed values.     

Excimer laser junction of crystalline silicon solar cells

An excimer laser cut trench is an effective means of providing junction isolation between the n⁺ diffused region and the aluminium back contact of a crystalline silicon solar cell. This method was developed for processing of edge-defined film-fed growth (EFG) silicon ribbon solar cells and has several features that make it attractive for low-cost solar cell processing. It is a single-step, noncontacting, dry process which is conducted in air. Only 100 laser pulses are required for isolation along a 10-cm line of focus, which permits a high throughput for this process. This technique should also be applicable to other types of crystalline solar cell where cell junctions are formed by a thermal diffusion process     

Emitter layer optimization in heterojunction bifacial silicon solar cells

Silicon solar cells continue to dominate the market, due to the abundance of silicon and their acceptable efficiency. The heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer (HIT) structure is now the dominant technology. Increasing the efficiency of these cells could expand the development choices for HIT solar cells. We presented a detailed investigation of the emitter a-Si:H(n) layer of a p-type bifacial HIT solar cell in terms of characteristic parameters which include layer doping concentration, thickness, band gap width, electron affinity, hole mobility, and so on. Solar cell composition: (ZnO/nc-Si:H(n)/a-Si:H(i)/c-Si(p)/a-Si:H(i)/nc-Si:H(p)/ZnO). The results reveal optimal values for the investigated parameters, for which the highest computed efficiency is 26.45% when lighted from the top only and 21.21% when illuminated from the back only.     

Low-cost industrial technologies of crystalline silicon solar cells

Approximately 2 billion people, mainly in Third World countries, are not connected to an electric grid. The standard, centralized grid development is too expensive and time consuming to solve the energy demand problem. Therefore, there is a need for decentralized renewable energy sources. The main attractiveness of solar cells is that they generate electricity directly from sunlight and can be mounted in modular, stand-alone photovoltaic (PV) systems. Particular attention is paid in this paper to crystalline silicon solar cells, since bulk silicon solar-cell (mono and multi) modules comprise approximately 85% of all worldwide PV module shipments. Energy conversion efficiency as high as 24% has been achieved on laboratory, small-area monocrystalline silicon cells, whereas the typical efficiency of industrial crystalline silicon solar cells is in the range of 13-16%. The market price of PV modules remains for the last few years in the range of $3.5-4.5/watt peak (Wp). For the photovoltaic industry, the biggest concern is to improve the efficiency and decrease the price of the commercial PV modules. Efficiency-enhancement techniques of commercial cells are described in detail. Adaptation of many high-efficiency features to industrially fabricated solar cells. The latest study shows that increasing the PV market size toward 500 MWp/y and accounting for realistic industrial improvements can lead to a drastic PV module price reduction down to $1/Wp     

太阳能电池的电势诱导衰减及检测

晶体硅组件的电势诱导衰减是现在的晶体硅电池组件在高电压系统下广泛面临的失效模式。常规组件的测试方法需要至少96小时的测试时间。在本文中,我们试图通过实验找到一种快速的太阳能电池的抗电势诱导衰减性能的方法。采用NaCl溶液作为Na+源, PVB 作为封装材料,我们能够在1小时内完成实验。在使用了新的抗电势诱导衰减工艺的太阳能电池上也成功进行了测试。经过试验证明实验前后电池片的反向电流的变化是很重要的判断标准。通常具有抗电势诱导衰退性能的电池反向漏电试验后变化是小于2倍的。电池的结果和相对应的组件的测试结果进行了比较,结果显示两者吻合的很好。     

New developments in amorphous thin-film silicon solar cells

Thin-film silicon solar cells usually contain amorphous silicon layers made by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). This CVD method has the advantage that large-area devices can be manufactured at a low processing temperature, thus facilitating low-cost solar cells on glass, metal foil, or polymer foil. In order to obtain higher conversion efficiencies while keeping the manufacturing cost low, a new development is to introduce low bandgap materials in a multijunction device structure. A frequently used low bandgap material is amorphous silicon-germanium. Record initial efficiencies in excess of 15% have been reported for triple-junction solar cells comprising these alloys. In this paper, we present a novel manufacturing method for amorphous silicon based tandem cells suitable for roll-to-roll production     

Advanced manufacturing concepts for crystalline silicon solar cells

An overview is given concerning current industrial technologies, near future improvements and medium term developments in the field of industrially implementable crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication. The paper proves that considerable improvements are still possible, both in efficiency and in production cost. The paper also proves that a lot of effort is being put worldwide on thinner substrates and on thin-film crystalline silicon cells deposited on cheap carriers, in order to save in substrate cost and in order to gain more independence from availability problems of silicon feedback     

Optimization and degradation of rubrene/C70 heterojunction solar cells

Small molecule organic solar cells (OSCs) with the structure of indium tin oxide (ITO)/molybdenum trioxide (MoO3) (5 nm)/rubrene (x nm)/fullerene (C70) (y nm)/2, 9-dimethyl-4, 7-diphenyl-1, 10-phenanthroline (BCP) (6 nm)/aluminum (Al) (150 nm) are fabricated. The thickness of active layer for the devices is investigated in details. The results show that the optimum thicknesses of rubrene layer and C70 layer are 30 nm and 25 nm, respectively. The degradation of the device is also investigated. The result indicates that the open-circuit voltage (Voc) does not change, while the short-circuit current density (Jsc), fill factor (FF) and power conversion efficiency (PCE) decrease continuously with time. The degradation can be attributed to the oxygen in ambient diffusing and infiltrating into the active materials and reacting with C70 in cells, which can result in the increase of interfacial series resistance.     

Estimation of the degradation of amorphous silicon solar cells

A long-term degradation test on amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar cells was performed under various light intensity and temperature conditions. We derived a basic equation for estimating the degradation of conversion efficiency and clarified the dependence of the level of degradation on these parameters. A unique phenomenon in which degradation was suppressed with increasing temperature was observed, and negative activation energies were obtained. The degraded characteristics of the solar cells recovered upon thermal annealing and the recovery characteristics were approximately using a stretched exponential function. The mechanisms by which degradation and recovery advance simultaneously with time are discussed.     

Passivation of photonic nanostructures for crystalline silicon solar cells

We report on the optical and electrical performances of periodic photonic nanostructures, prepared by nanoimprint lithography (NIL) and two different etching routes, plasma, and wet chemical etching. Optically, these periodic nanostructures offer a lower integrated reflectance compared with the industrial state‐of‐the‐art random pyramid texturing. However, electrically, they are known to be more challenging for solar cell integration. We propose the use of wet chemical etching for fabricating inverted nanopyramids as a way to minimize the surface recombination velocities and maintain a conventional cell integration flow. In contrast to the broadly used plasma etching for nanopatterning, the wet chemically etched nanopatterning results in low surface recombination velocities, comparable with the state‐of‐the‐art random pyramid texturing. Applied to 40‐µm thick epitaxially grown crystalline silicon foils bonded to a glass carrier superstrate, the periodic‐inverted nanopyramids show carrier lifetimes comparable with the non‐textured reference foils (τ_eff = 250 µs). We estimate a maximum effective surface recombination velocity of ~8 cm/s at the patterned surface, which is comparable with the state‐of‐the‐art values for crystalline silicon solar cells. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

非晶硅薄膜太阳能电池应用开发新进展

非晶硅（ａ－Ｓｉ）薄膜太阳能电池是取之不尽的洁净能源－太阳能的光电元（组）件。文章详述了ａ－Ｓｉ薄膜太阳能电池的工艺优势，市场开发状况，可能应用领域，存在问题和展望。     

Optimization of Al_2O_3/SiN_x stacked antireflection structures for N-type surface-passivated crystalline silicon solar cells

In the case of N-type solar cells,the anti-reflection property,as one of the important factors to further improve the energy-conversion efficiency,has been optimized using a stacked Al₂O₃/SiN_x layer.The effect of SiN_x layer thickness on the surface reflection property was systematically studied in terms of both experimental and theoretical measurement.In the stacked Al₂O₃/SiN_x layers,results demonstrated that the surface reflection property can be effectively optimized by adding a SiN_x layer,leading to the improvement in the final photovoltaic characteristic of the N-type solar cells.     

Pyramid size control and morphology treatment for high-efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells

This paper investigates the formation process of surface pyramid and etching characteristics during the texturing process of mono-crystalline silicon wafers. It is found that there is an etch rate transition point in alkaline anisotropic etching when {100} plane-dominated etch turns to {111} plane-dominated etch, and the pyramid size has a strong linear correlation with the etch amount at the transition point. Several techniques were developed to control the pyramid size by monitoring and adjusting the etching amount. A wide range of average pyramid sizes were successfully achieved, from 0.5 to 12 μm. The experiments of the pyramid size on the light reflectance, the minority carrier lifetime (MCLT), and the performance of silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells were carried out and analyzed. A desirable range of pyramid sizes was empirically determined by our investigation. In order to reduce the density states on the texturing surface, the wet-chemical smoothing treatment was also investigated. The smoothing treatment improves the passivation quality and the performance of the solar cells. Through pyramid size control and morphology treatment, together with the amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) deposition improvement, and electrode optimization, high performance of SHJ solar cells has been achieved, up to conversion efficiency 23.6%.