CMOS-Enabled Interdigitated Back-Contact Solar Cells for Biomedical Applications

Author

Yung-Jr Hung ; Tsung-Yen Chuang ; Chung-Lin Chun ; Meng-Syuan Cai ; Hsiu-Wei Su ; San-Liang Lee

Author_Institution

Dept. of Photonics, Nat. Sun Yat-sen Univ., Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Volume

61

Issue

12

fYear

2014

fDate

Dec. 2014

Firstpage

4019

Lastpage

4024

Abstract

We demonstrate a 980-nm laser-driven CMOS-enabled interdigitated back-contact (IBC) solar cell for biomedical applications. The design of this device leverages from the CMOS process to allow 2-D junction formation and uniform series resistance, but suffers from poor minority carrier properties in bulk substrate. This issue is partially solved in this paper by thinning down the substrate to 60 μm, leading to an ultimate efficiency of 15%. After inserting an emulated tissue loss, an 1.67-mm² IBC solar cell is capable of generating an electrical power of 159 μW under a concentrated illumination intensity of 10 mW, which is within the conservative limit to human skin.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; biomedical electronics; solar cells; CMOS process; biomedical applications; bulk substrate; laser driven CMOS enabled interdigitated back contact solar cell; minority carrier properties; power 10 mW; power 159 muW; wavelength 980 nm; Biomedical equipment; CMOS integrated circuits; CMOS process; Implants; Lighting; Photovoltaic cells; Solar cells; Substrates; CMOS; concentrated solar cell; implantable device; integrated passive device (IPD); interdigitated back-contact (IBC) solar cell; interdigitated back-contact (IBC) solar cell.;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2014.2364539

Filename

6945829