Design rules for the reduction of the influence of material quality on the performance of crystalline silicon solar cells

Author

Ristow, Alan ; Rohatgi, Ajeet

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA, USA

fYear

2002

fDate

19-24 May 2002

Firstpage

458

Lastpage

461

Abstract

Design rules are established to maximize efficiency while minimizing the influence of material quality on device efficiency. These design rules are verified using numerical modeling. It is shown that by reducing the back surface recombination velocity, adjusting doping concentration, introducing light-trapping features, and selecting the L/W ratio according to the lowest bulk lifetime in the material, absolute efficiency and efficiency variance may be simultaneously optimized in substrates of varying quality.

Keywords

carrier lifetime; design engineering; doping profiles; elemental semiconductors; semiconductor device models; silicon; solar cells; substrates; surface recombination; L/W ratio; Si; absolute efficiency; back surface recombination velocity; crystalline silicon solar cells; design rules; doping concentration; efficiency; efficiency variance; light-trapping features; lowest bulk lifetime; material quality influence reduction; numerical modeling; quality; substrates; Conductivity; Crystalline materials; Crystallization; Design engineering; Doping; Guidelines; Passivation; Photovoltaic cells; Reflectivity; Silicon;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2002. Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth IEEE

ISSN

1060-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7471-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2002.1190558

Filename

1190558