Performance and degradation of the (p)a-SiC:H/(i)a-Si:H/(n)a-Si:H solar cell: a computer modeling study

Author

Rubinelli, F.A. ; Hou, J.Y. ; Fonash, S. ; Wronski, C.R. ; Bennet, M. ; Wiedeman, S.

Author_Institution

Center for Electron. Mater. & Process., Pennsylvania State Univ., PA, USA

fYear

1991

fDate

7-11 Oct 1991

Firstpage

1405

Abstract

The computer code AMPS (analysis of microelectronic and photonic structures) has been used to study the performance of the (p)a-SiC:H/(i)a-Si:H/(n)a-Si:H heterojunction solar cell. The authors found initially that AMPS predicts for an ideal (p)a-Si:H/(i)a-Si:H/(n)a-Si:H heterojunction an open-circuit voltage V_oc value of about 1 V. However, experimental values of V_oc are around 0.8 V without (i)a-SiC:H buffer layers at the p/i interface and around 0.85 V with these buffer layers. The authors studied the possible origins of these lower experimentally observed values and have found that although higher concentrations of defect states anywhere in a cell can reduce V_oc, the impact of these defect states on V_oc and fill factor (FF) is different according to their location

Keywords

amorphous semiconductors; digital simulation; electronic engineering computing; elemental semiconductors; hydrogen; p-n heterojunctions; semiconductor device models; semiconductor doping; silicon; silicon compounds; software packages; solar cells; 0.8 V; 1 V; AMPS; SiC:H-Si:H-Si:H; buffer layers; defect states; degradation; digital simulation; heterojunction; interface; open-circuit voltage; performance; semiconductor device models; software packages; solar cell; Amorphous silicon; Buffer layers; Degradation; Difference equations; Heterojunctions; Nonlinear equations; Optical computing; Photovoltaic cells; Poisson equations; Tail;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 1991., Conference Record of the Twenty Second IEEE

Conference_Location

Las Vegas, NV

Print_ISBN

0-87942-636-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.1991.169474

Filename

169474