Enhanced light trapping in thin film silicon solar cells deposited on PET and glass

Author

Terrazzoni-Daudrix, Vanessa ; Guillet, Joëlle ; Niquille, Xavier ; Feitknecht, Luc ; Freitas, Frédéric ; Winkler, Pascal ; Shah, Arvind ; Morf, R. ; Parriaux, O. ; Fischer, D.

Author_Institution

IMT, Neuchatel Univ., Switzerland

Volume

2

fYear

2003

fDate

18-18 May 2003

Firstpage

1596

Abstract

The goal of this work is to reduce the production cost of thin-film silicon solar cells, by using PET substrates and thereby maintain a reasonable efficiency. The authors studied different kinds of textured back reflectors fabricated on glass and PET with the aim of increasing the short-circuit current density (J/sub sc/) in a-Si:H and /spl mu/c-Si:H n-i-p-type solar cells: random textures and periodic gratings were both tested. Compared to co-deposited cells on flat mirrors, the gain in J/sub sc/ is 15% for a-Si:H solar cells on randomly-textured PET at the initial state and 20% after light soaking, 8% for a-Si:H solar cells on gratings (so far only on glass and at the initial state) and 15.2% for /spl mu/c-Si:H solar cells on randomly-textured back reflectors, on glass. Best n-i-p a-Si:H solar cells on PET and /spl mu/c-Si:H cells on glass have so far reached 5.8% (after light-soaking) and 9.2% efficiencies, resp.

Keywords

amorphous semiconductors; current density; elemental semiconductors; hydrogen; semiconductor thin films; silicon; solar cells; sputter etching; PET; Si:H; amorphous Si:H; codeposited cells; glass; light soaking; light trapping; nip type solar cells; plasma etching; production cost; random textures; short circuit current density; textured back reflectors; thin film silicon solar cells;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, 2003. Proceedings of 3rd World Conference on

Conference_Location

Osaka, Japan

Print_ISBN

4-9901816-0-3

Type

conf

Filename

1306233