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The DC saddle field glow discharge method was used to deposit a-Si:H in order to passivate c-Si surfaces. The process temperature and the thickness of the a-Si:H films were varied. In addition subsequent annealing of the samples were studied. Passivation quality of the a-Si:H overlayers were studied by measuring the effective minority carrier lifetime in the heterostructures as a function of the minority...
In this paper heterojunction emitters formed by intrinsic and doped amorphous silicon layers on top of the crystalline silicon are presented as a promising option for rear junction n-type silicon solar cells which are suited for the indoor application. In a preliminary test, n-type solar cells with a rear-junction heterojunction emitter show higher open circuit voltages compared to rear-junction cells...
The cost of photovoltaic (PV) energy generation has been steadily reduced with the increase of solar cell power conversion efficiency and the drop of manufacturing cost. An effective way of lowering the cost of Si thin film solar cells is to increase the solar panel size by growing thin films on large area substrates, where it is important to maintain uniform film properties to ensure efficient and...
We proposed a low cost solution of flexible amorphous silicon solar cells on Polyethylene terephthalate(PET) polymer substrates deposited at low temperatures. PET films were firstly annealed both in the air and in vacuum at different temperatures, and the properties of PET films after annealing were evaluated. Then PET films were exposed to glow discharge Argon plasma in a standard PECVD system to...
The passivation characteristic of c-Si wafer with thin a-Si:H layer plays key parameter in a-Si:H/c-Si hetero-junction (HJ) solar cells. The significance of passivation depends not only on the quality of a-Si layers but also condition of c-Si substrate surface. C-Si substrates are textured to pyramid shape for effective absorption of light using NaOH or KOH with IPA. Textured c-Si substrates are different...
The aluminum-induced crystallization and layer exchange process shows great promise for converting a-Si into large-grained poly-Si for solar cell applications. To investigate the relationship between the grain size of Al and the final grain size of poly-Si, a series of samples were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering 165 nm of Al onto SiN/SiO2 coated (100) silicon substrates. The Al grain size was...
Crystalline silicon wafer (c-Si) can be extremely well passivated by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposited (PECVD) amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films. As a result, on flat substrates, solar cells with very high open circuit voltage are readily obtained. On textured substrates however the passivation is more cumbersome, likely due to the presence of localized recombinative paths situated at the pyramid...
To meet the aggressive growth of the world-wide photovoltaic market of the past several years, EPV SOLAR has further developed its technology, reduced its manufacturing costs, and expanded its production capacity in the US and Europe. EPV SOLAR currently has three manufacturing plants, located in Lawrenceville and Robbinsville, New Jersey, USA, and Senftenberg, Brandenburg, Germany. With the introduction...
Theoretical and experimental studies were performed to explore the effect of light intensity on the performance of silicon-based thin film solar cells. The theoretical study was conducted using AMPS-1D (Analysis of Microelectronic and Photonic Structures) to analyze how the device structure affects the performance of silicon-based solar cells under various concentration ratios of sunlight. We calculated...
In amorphous silicon (a-Si), Si atoms are not all bonded to 4 other silicon atomes in an ordered manner. and this leads to the formation of defects such as Si dangling bonds.H2 used in the a-Si:H film deposition process passivate the dangling bonds by forming Si-H bonds, thus reducing the defect density. However H* in thin hydrogeneited a-Si films is very reactive especially under light exposure and...
The effect of the texture of Ag/ZnO back reflector (BR) on nc-Si:H single-junction solar cell performance has been investigated systematically. Using a high textured BR, a 74% gain in short circuit current density (Jsc) was obtained over a cell made using the same recipe on specular stainless steel. However, the texture reduced the fill factor (FF) from 0.73 to 0.54. Dark current versus voltage measurements...
In this work, the excimer-laser-induced crystallization of amorphous silicon (a-Si) films was investigated numerically and experimentally. This study had investigated the effects of irradiating energy density on the grain size and structure by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In the surface microstructure analysis of the laser-irradiated area, the critical fluences (full-melt threshold, FMT) between...
In this paper, two-dimensional (2D) simulation of interdigitated back contact silicon heterojunction (IBC-SHJ) solar cells is presented using Sentaurus Device, a software package of Synopsys TCAD. A model is established incorporating a distribution of trap states of amorphous-silicon material and thermionic emission across the amorphous-silicon / crystalline-silicon hetero-interface. The 2D nature...
A model is proposed to assign the hydrogen complexes in amorphous and nano/microcrystalline silicon to the hydride stretching modes in infrared spectra. We demonstrate that this analysis approach is a helpful tool to characterize the material properties of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon.
Thin films are reaching 1-GW annual production because of the success of one company and technology, First Solar CdTe. Other thin films languish, with amorphous and thin film silicon still restrained by low efficiencies; and CIS yet to demonstrate sufficient volume production. Will the future of thin films be only the future of CdTe? Yet even with commercial success, CdTe must also compete with crystalline...
The birth of amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) cells came as a promising solution for addressing the world energy needs as compared to its crystalline counterpart. This cutting edge advantage has been attributed largely to the simple fabrication process usually comprising of a glow discharge decomposition of silane (SiH4) using a plasma chemical vapour deposition (PCVD), less material (thin film) and simple...
United Solar Ovonic (USO) has developed a-Si:H based solar cells on polymer substrate using high-throughput roll-to-roll deposition technology for space and stratospheric missions. In addition, we have advanced two new developments: (1) the monolithically laser-integrated module on flexible polymer substrate to attain an initial specific power as high as 2343 W/kg at the module level; and (2) a new...
A two dimensional physically-based computer simulation of single junction pin amorphous silicon solar cells is presented using Sentaurus, Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD). The simulation program solves the Poisson, the continuity, and the current density equations by using a standard procedure for amorphous materials, including the continuous density of state model, Shockley-Read-Hall and Auger...
The n-type hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon-incorporated silicon oxide (n-μc-SiO:H) films are prepared by 13.56 MHz plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (rf-PECVD) using SiH4, H2 and CO2 gases for an inter-layer between the amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) top-cell and the microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H) bottom-cell in the thin-film silicon tandem solar cells. The optical and electrical properties...
Solution-processed spherical surface textures are demonstrated as a cost-effective antireflection coating on commercial amorphous Si solar cells. The spherical textures are formed with a monolayer of silica microspheres by convective coating, followed by a spin-on-glass film. It is found that the spherical texture reduces the reflectance of the cells in a broad wavelength range of 400 - 1,200 nm....
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