The materials characteristic and the efficiency degradation of solar cells from solar grade silicon from a metallurgical process route

The rising conventional energy prices have opened up the market for photovoltaic, but the lack of polycrystalline silicon from the chemical route restricts the growth of crystalline silicon solar cells. Recently there is a trend that produces solar cells by using the newly developed solar grade silicon feedstock from a metallurgical process route. In this article, the chemical components of solar grade silicon feedstock are analyzed. The single crystalline silicon solar cells from 100% solar grade silicon feedstock from a metallurgical process route are investigated. The outdoor performance of solar modules encapsulated by such cells is reported. The experimental evidence suggests that such solar cells can achieve the average efficiency higher than 14% on single crystalline silicon wafers. However, the efficiency degradation of solar cells under natural sunlight is significant, and the electrical uniformity of small cells diced from the whole cell is too bad. The metal impurities, oxygen, carbon, and their complexes influence the performance stabilization. The article proves that the module made by such cells has a big cell mismatch loss than normal cells made by electronic grade silicon, even if these cells come from the same sort. And the operating temperature of the cells of the modules is 15–22 °C higher than normal modules under the same conditions. The solar grade silicon feedstock from a metallurgical process route has to be improved farther in order to be used in photovoltaic industry.     

In situ micro-Raman spectroscopic study of laser-induced crystallization of amorphous silicon thin films on aluminum-doped zinc oxide substrate

The effects of laser irradiation condition and deposition substrate on the laser crystallized 330?nm Si films structure were investigated using in situ micro-Raman spectroscopy. Results showed that crystallization of amorphous silicon (a-Si) films started at laser irradiation power density of 0.6?×?10⁵?W/cm² for 20?s. The crystalline volume fraction of Si films depended mostly on the laser power density but not on the laser irradiation time. The Si films on both smooth and textured aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) substrates exhibited lower crystalline volume fraction and smaller average grain size than the Si films on glass did. The Si films on textured AZO revealed higher crystalline volume fraction and larger average grain size than the Si films on smooth AZO did. The stress in crystalline Si films was observed to be compressive on AZO and tensile on glass. The compressive stress in crystalline Si films on textured AZO was slightly less than that on smooth AZO. The present work indicated that the structure of crystalline Si films on textured AZO was improved than that on smooth AZO, which may be helpful to crystalline Si thin-film solar cell.     

Thin-film solar cells

The rapid progress that is being made with inorganic thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technologies, both in the laboratory and in industry, is reviewed. While amorphous silicon based PV modules have been around for more than 20 years, recent industrial developments include the first polycrystalline silicon thin-film solar cells on glass and the first tandem solar cells based on stacks of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon films (“micromorph cells”). Significant thin-film PV production levels are also being set up for cadmium telluride and copper indium diselenide.     

Plasmabeschichtungsverfahren für die Solarzellenherstellung

Photovoltaics, i.e. the conversion of light into electric energy, is an important link of the chain of regenerative energies, at which the further growing of the photovoltaic industry depends on the reducing of the costs from the manufacturing of the solar modules. Potential to reach the aim are cheaper basic material for the solar cells, as well as the reducing of the cost to manufacture cells and modules and the increasing efficiency of the solar cells. An essential process step during production of crystalline silicon solar cells is their coating with an antireflective and passivation layer. Amorphous hydrogenated silicon nitride (SiN) layers, deposited under vacuum by PECVD (Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition), have been demonstrated to be – besides good anti‐reflection layers – excellent means for surface and bulk passivation of silicon solar cells. Therefore they are especially effecting a significant increase of the conversion efficiency of multi‐crystalline silicon solar cells. With the common concept “SiNA” a series of effective, industrial scale systems for the SiN‐coating has been developed and qualified, caused by its excellent layer properties, high throughput, high up‐time and a maintenance‐friendly design. Consecutively performance parameters of the systems and relevant data of their use under production conditions are introduced.     

Rare earth organic complexes as down-shifters to improve Si-based solar cell efficiency

This work reports on the optical and electrical characterization of crystalline silicon based solar modules encapsulated with ethylene-vinyl-acetate layers (that is the encapsulating matrix used nowadays by the photovoltaic industry) doped with a single europium complex whose sensitized region is broadened due to the presence of a co-ligand. Such europium doped EVA layers are able to realize down-shifting of photons with wavelength lower than 460 nm without introducing modifications of the industrial process leading to the fabrication of the photovoltaic modules. This effect has been proven under Air Mass 1.5 conditions (simulating terrestrial applications), where a 2.9% relative increase of the total power delivered by the encapsulated modules has been observed, allowing a reduction in the watt-peak price.     

Optimization of textured structure on crystalline silicon wafer for heterojunction solar cell

Increasing the light scattering in monocrystalline silicon solar cells by surface texturing is an emerging field of practice in modern silicon photovoltaic. In this article, the surface micro-textures were performed on the monocrystalline silicon surface in potassium hydroxide solution without adding isopropyl alcohol. The parameters of the etching process such as concentration, time duration and temperature were examined to study the effects on shape and geometry of the microstructure. In addition, ray-tracing simulations of the light trapping were performed on these textured structures. The textured surfaces resemble the structures of uniform pyramids, mostly small pyramids, and mostly big pyramids. The simulation technique was applied in order to evaluate the light trapping effect by textured surfaces based on above pyramidal shape models. Afterwards, theoretical and experimental values of reflection data were compared. Such a simulation model was perceived as an effective tool for optimizing the micro structural shape, thus improving the light trapping. In this study, for solar cell applications, the double-side heterojunction solar cell with mostly big pyramids shape yielded an active area conversion efficiency of 16.3% with an open circuit voltage of 0.645 V, a short circuit current of 34.8 mA cm⁻² and a fill factor of 0.73.     

太阳能用晶体硅铸锭制备技术

在过去20年中,光伏市场以惊人的速度增长,光伏发电逐步成为世界能源发电的主要来源之一。2016年全球新增装机量超过75GW,较2015年增长34%,其中,又以晶体硅太阳能电池为主,占整个光伏市场的90%以上,而多晶硅又占据了整个晶体硅太阳能电池的70%以上。相比于直拉单晶硅,定向凝固铸造法生产的晶体硅材料具有更好的性价比,但含有较多的杂质、位错等晶体缺陷。更高品质、更低成本的太阳能电池始终是业界追寻的目标。本文以传统铸造法生长多晶硅技术为基础,介绍了目前几种主流的晶体硅铸造工艺方法,包括全熔工艺制备多晶硅锭,半熔工艺生长高效多晶硅锭,以及铸造法制备大尺寸单晶硅锭。另外,本文还从硅锭外观和性能等方面阐述了铸造法晶体硅的发展方向。文中数据部分为笔者进行的实验论证,部分为其他文献的研究成果,希望能为现阶段太阳能晶体硅的生产和研究工作提供参考。     

Recent advances in hot-wire CVD R&D at NREL: From 18% silicon heterojunction cells to silicon epitaxy at glass-compatible temperatures

Our research aiming to improve silicon photovoltaic materials and devices extensively utilizes hot-wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD). We have recently achieved 18.2% heterojunction silicon solar cells by applying HWCVD a-Si:H front and back contacts to textured p-type silicon wafers. This is the best reported p-wafer heterojunction solar cell by any technique. We have also dramatically improved the quality of HWCVD silicon epitaxy and recently achieved 11 μm of epitaxial growth at a rate of 110 nm/min.     

Ultrathin silicon solar microcells for semitransparent, mechanically flexible and microconcentrator module designs

The high natural abundance of silicon, together with its excellent reliability and good efficiency in solar cells, suggest its continued use in production of solar energy, on massive scales, for the foreseeable future. Although organics, nanocrystals, nanowires and other new materials hold significant promise, many opportunities continue to exist for research into unconventional means of exploiting silicon in advanced photovoltaic systems. Here, we describe modules that use large-scale arrays of silicon solar microcells created from bulk wafers and integrated in diverse spatial layouts on foreign substrates by transfer printing. The resulting devices can offer useful features, including high degrees of mechanical flexibility, user-definable transparency and ultrathin-form-factor microconcentrator designs. Detailed studies of the processes for creating and manipulating such microcells, together with theoretical and experimental investigations of the electrical, mechanical and optical characteristics of several types of module that incorporate them, illuminate the key aspects.     

Efficiency simulations of thin film chalcogenide photovoltaic cells for different indoor lighting conditions

Photovoltaic (PV) energy is an efficient natural energy source for outdoor applications. However, for indoor applications, the efficiency of PV cells is much lower. Typically, the light intensity under artificial lighting conditions is less than 10 W/m² as compared to 100-1000 W/m² under outdoor conditions. Moreover, the spectrum is different from the outdoor solar spectrum. In this context, the question arises whether thin film chalcogenide photovoltaic cells are suitable for indoor use. This paper contributes to answering that question by comparing the power output of different thin film chalcogenide solar cells with the classical crystalline silicon cell as reference. The comparisons are done by efficiency simulation based on the quantum efficiencies of the solar cells and the light spectra of typical artificial light sources i.e. an LED lamp, a “warm” and a “cool” fluorescent tube and a common incandescent and halogen lamp, which are compared to the outdoor AM 1.5 spectrum as reference.     

Influence of substrates on the structural and morphological properties of RF sputtered ITO thin films for photovoltaic application

Polycrystalline ITO films were deposited by RF sputtering on three different substrates of glass, p-type (100) and multicrystalline textured silicon wafers. Properties of ITO films were analyzed by XRD, SEM, four point probe system and UV/VIS/IR spectrometer. The ITO film on mono and multi-Si crystallizes in a three-dimensional manner, and a granular crystalline structure is formed with a (222) XRD peak, while the ITO film on glass shows strong XRD (400) peak and grows in two dimensions and a domain structure is formed. Resistivity measurements reveal that resistivity of ITO on glass is minimum due to higher concentration of carriers.     

Impact of interface microstructure on adhesion force between silver paste and silicon solar cells’ emitter

The adhesion strength between silver paste and silicon solar cell’s emitter is a primary source of long-term degradation in solar modules. In this study, the interface microstructure between screen-printed silver thick-film and silicon solar cells’ emitter was studied. Three kinds of commercial silver pastes were printed on silicon solar cells’ emitter to form different Ag–Si contact structures. The interface microstructure between silver paste and emitter was observed by SEM, while the compositions of Ag thick-film were analyzed by EDX. The deductions we got from SEM and EDX were verified by the pull test for the first time. The results presented in this study give some suggestions to the development of silver paste and crystalline silicon solar cells’ fire-through.     

Photovoltaic materials,history, status and outlook

This paper reviews the history, the present status and possible future developments of photovoltaic (PV) materials for terrestrial applications. After a brief history and introduction of the photovoltaic effect theoretical requirements for the optimal performance of materials for pn-junction solar cells are discussed. Most important are efficiency, long-term stability and, not to be neglected, lowest possible cost. Today the market is dominated by crystalline silicon in its multicrystalline and monocrystalline form. The physical and technical limitations of this material are discussed. Although crystalline silicon is not the optimal material from a solid state physics point of view it dominates the market and will continue to do this for the next 5–10 years. Because of its importance a considerable part of this review deals with materials aspects of crystalline silicon. For reasons of cost only multicrystalline silicon and monocrystalline Czochralski (Cz) crystals are used in practical cells. Light induced instability in this Cz-material has recently been investigated and ways to eliminate this effect have been devised. For future large scale production of crystalline silicon solar cells development of a special solar grade silicon appears necessary. Ribbon growth is a possibility to avoid the costly sawing process. A very vivid R&D area is thin-film crystalline silicon (about 5–30 μm active layer thickness) which would avoid the crystal growing and sawing processes. The problems arising for this material are: assuring adequate light absorption, assuring good crystal quality and purity of the films, and finding a substrate that fulfills all requirements. Three approaches have emerged: high-temperature, low-temperature and transfer technique. Genuine thin-film materials are characterized by a direct band structure which gives them very high light absorption. Therefore, these materials have a thickness of only one micron or less. The oldest such material is amorphous silicon which is the second most important material today. It is mainly used in consumer products but is on the verge to also penetrate the power market. Other strong contenders are chalcogenides like copper indium diselenide (CIS) and cadmium telluride. The interest has expanded from CuInSe₂, to CuGaSe₂, CuInS₂ and their multinary alloys Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)₂. The two deposition techniques are either separate deposition of the components followed by annealing on one hand or coevaporation. Laboratory efficiencies for small area devices are approaching 19% and large area modules have reached 12%. Pilot production of CIS-modules has started in the US and Germany. Cadmium telluride solar cells also offer great promise. They have only slightly lower efficiency and are also at the start of production. In the future other materials and concepts can be expected to come into play. Some of these are: dye sensitized cells, organic solar cells and various concentrating systems including III/V-tandem cells. Theoretical materials that have not yet been realized are Auger generation material and intermediate metallic band material.     

Pulse Transient Method as a Tool for the Study of Thermal Properties of Solar Cell Laminating Films

The paper reports a study on the possible influence of surroundings on thermal properties of various types of laminating films used in the design of photovoltaic (PV) modules based on crystalline silicon. The main purpose of cell encapsulation is to provide protection of PV panels against environmental damage (especially humidity). However, the laminating film can influence also the electrical behavior of the whole panel because of differences in the working temperature. It is well known that with increasing solar cell temperature the PV conversion efficiency is decreasing. Therefore, it is important to study the thermophysical properties of laminating foils which are used for PV cells encapsulation. These materials must possess low specific heat and high thermal conductivity. Therefore, by using a laminating film with low absorption, high thermal conductivity, and high emissive ability of the rear (not illuminated) side, the PV module working temperature can be lowered and thus the generated power is increased and the investment recovery time shortened. The method of measurement is relative. The goal is not to determine the thermophysical parameters of laminating foils, but only to compare the influence of selected types of laminating foils on heat flow from the PV panel. A planar heat source placed between two PMMA blocks with defined thermal properties was adopted as the model of a real PV panel. A measurement on real PV panels was carried out by thermal imaging with a thermocamera. The correlation between both measurements was found.     

Graphene/silicon nanowire Schottky junction for enhanced light harvesting

Schottky junction solar cells are assembled by directly coating graphene films on n-type silicon nanowire (SiNW) arrays. The graphene/SiNW junction shows enhanced light trapping and faster carrier transport compared to the graphene/planar Si structure. With chemical doping, the SiNW-based solar cells showed energy conversion efficiencies of up to 2.86% at AM1.5 condition, opening a possibility of using graphene/semiconductor nanostructures in photovoltaic application.     

Lithography-free sub-100 nm nanocone array antireflection layer for low-cost silicon solar cell

A high-density and -uniformity sub-100 nm surface-oxidized silicon nanocone forest structure is created and integrated onto the existing texturization microstructures on a photovoltaic device surface by a one-step high-throughput plasma-enhanced texturization method. We suppressed the broadband optical reflection on chemically textured grade-B silicon solar cells for up to 70.25% through this nanomanufacturing method. The performance of the solar cell is improved with the short-circuit current increased by 7.1%, fill factor increased by 7.0%, and conversion efficiency increased by 14.66%. Our method demonstrates the potential to improve the photovoltaic device performance with low-cost and high-throughput nanomanufacturing technology.     

Carbon/Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells: State of the Art and Prospects

In the last few decades, advances and breakthroughs of carbon materials have been witnessed in both scientific fundamentals and potential applications. The combination of carbon materials with traditional silicon semiconductors to fabricate solar cells has been a promising field of carbon science. The power conversion efficiency has reached 15–17% with an astonishing speed, and the diversity of systems stimulates interest in further research. Here, the historical development and state‐of‐the‐art carbon/silicon heterojunction solar cells are covered. Firstly, the basic concept and mechanism of carbon/silicon solar cells are introduced with a specific focus on solar cells assembled with carbon nanotubes and graphene due to their unique structures and properties. Then, several key technologies with special electrical and optical designs are introduced to improve the cell performance, such as chemical doping, interface passivation, anti‐reflection coatings, and textured surfaces. Finally, potential pathways and opportunities based on the carbon/silicon heterojunction are envisaged. The aspects discussed here may enable researchers to better understand the photovoltaic effect of carbon/silicon heterojunctions and to optimize the design of graphene‐based photodevices for a wide range of applications.     

Characterization of nanoporous silicon layer to reduce the optical losses of crystalline silicon solar cells

Reduction of optical losses in crystalline silicon solar cells by surface modification is one of the most important issues of silicon photovoltaics. Porous Si layers on the front surface of textured Si substrates have been investigated with the aim of improving the optical losses of the solar cells, because an anti-reflection coating and a surface passivation can be obtained simultaneously in one process. We have demonstrated the feasibility of a very efficient porous Si AR layer, prepared by a simple, cost effective, electrochemical etching method. Silicon p-type CZ (100) oriented wafers were textured by anisotropic etching in sodium carbonate solution. Then, the porous Si layers were formed by electrochemical etching in HF solutions. After that, the properties of porous Si in terms of morphology, structure and reflectance are summarized. The structure of porous Si layers was investigated using SEM. The formation of a nanoporous Si layer on the textured silicon wafer result in a reflectance lower than 5% in the wavelength region from 500 to 900 nm. Such a surface modification allows improving the Si solar cell characteristics. An efficiency of 13.4% is achieved on a monocrystalline silicon solar cell using the electrochemical technique.     

Combined power of perovskites and silicon solar cells

The photovoltaic (PV) or solar cells technology can be categorised into two main groups, the wafer‐based and thin‐film based PVs. The wafer‐based PVs include the commonly known crystalline silicon (c‐Si) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) cells. The GaAs cells exhibit higher efficiency compared to crystalline silicon (c‐Si) cells but it is the later that dominates the commercial market. Thin‐film based (2nd Generation) PVs, including cadmium telluride (CdTe), amorphous silicon (a‐Si:H) and copper‐indium‐gallium‐selenide (CIGS), generally absorb light more efficiently than wafer‐based cells and can allow the use of materials in very thin films form. CdTe PVs have proven to be highly efficient but holds only a few percentage share of the market. There is still a need for more R&D before further commercialisation. An emerging and relatively new class of thin‐film based photovoltaics (3rd Generation) technology that has the potential to overcome the current energy conversion efficiencies and performance by making use of novel materials. This class of PVs include organic photovoltaic (OPV), dye‐synthesised solar cells (DSSC), quantum‐dot (QD) and last but not least, the perovskite PV. Perovskite PVs can offer a low cost energy generation solution with the best device conversion efficiencies have shot from lower than 4% in 2009 to more than 21% in 2016. Perovskite based devices can be fabricated using vacuum thermal evaporation or by solution processing of the active layers. Although most recent perovskite solar cells with record efficiencies (>20%) are prepared via solution processing, the early breakthrough in perovskite solar cells was made with vacuum processed perovskites thin films. Vacuum thermal evaporation offers the ability and flexibility to prepare solar cell devices in various configuration. Recent developments in the field of perovskite demonstrates its compatibility with both, first and second generation PV technologies, and is therefore likely to be embraced by the conventional PV industry and make its way into utility‐scale power generation.     

Controlled growth of a molecular bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cell.

The power conversion efficiency of organic photovoltaic cells has increased with the introduction of the donor-acceptor heterojunction that serves to dissociate strongly bound photogenerated excitons. Further efficiency increases have been achieved in both polymer and small-molecular-mass organic photovoltaic cells through the use of the bulk heterojunction (BHJ), where the distance an exciton must diffuse from its generation to its dissociation site is reduced in an interpenetrating network of the donor and acceptor materials. However, the random distribution of donor and acceptor materials in such structures can lead to charge trapping at bottlenecks and cul-de-sacs in the conducting pathways to the electrodes. Here, we present a method for growing crystalline organic films into a controlled bulk heterojunction; that is, the positions and orientations of donor and acceptor materials are determined during growth by organic vapour-phase deposition (OVPD), eliminating contorted and resistive conducting pathways while maximizing the interface area. This results in a substantial increase in power conversion efficiency compared with the best values obtained by 'random' small-molecular-weight BHJ solar cells formed by high-temperature annealing, or planar double heterojunction photovoltaic cells using the same archetypal materials systems.