Crystalline silicon on glass (CSG) thin-film solar cell modules

Green, Martin A.; Basore, Paul A.; Chang, Nathan L.; Clugston, D.A.; Egan, Renate; Evans, Rhett; Hogg, D. E.; Jarnason, Stefan; Keevers, Mark J.; Lasswell, P. G.; O’Sullivan, James; Schubert, U.; Turner, Anne I.; Wenham, Stuart; Young, Trevor L.

doi:10.1016/j.solener.2004.06.023

Cited by 226 publications

(139 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Surprisingly, this is true for all types of silicon, regardless whether the devices are based on amorphous, 1,2 nano-, micro-, 3,4 or polycrystalline material; 5 it even applies to wafer-based multicrystalline or single-crystal devices. 6 In order to absorb sufficient amounts of light in such thin devices, light scattering at the interfaces has proven to be a highly successful concept; Redfield proposed to use surface corrugations in the range of tens of micrometers in order to refract light and ideally to trap it inside the absorber layer by total internal reflection; 7 this concept has been applied ever since to wafer-based cells with typical thicknesses between 170 and 250 mm, and it becomes increasingly important as the cell thickness is reduced in modern designs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resonances and absorption enhancement in thin film silicon solar cells with periodic interface texture

Haug

Söderström

Naqavi

et al. 2011

Journal of Applied Physics

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We study absorption enhancement by light scattering at periodically textured interfaces in thin film silicon solar cells. We show that the periodicity establishes resonant coupling to propagating waveguide modes. Ideally, such modes propagate in the high index silicon film where they are eventually absorbed, but waveguide modes exist also in the transparent front contact layer if the product of its refractive index and thickness exceeds half the wavelength. Taking into account that the absorption coefficient of realistic transparent conducing films exceeds the one of silicon close to its band gap, certain waveguide modes will enhance parasitic absorption in the transparent front contact. From an analysis based on the statistic distribution of energy among the available waveguide and radiation modes, we conclude that conventional thin film silicon solar cells with thick and nonideal contacts may fail to reach the previously noted bulk limit of 4n 2Si ; instead, a more conservative limit of 4 n 2 Si À n 2 TCO À Á applies.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resonances and absorption enhancement in thin film silicon solar cells with periodic interface texture

Haug

Söderström

Naqavi

et al. 2011

Journal of Applied Physics

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show abstract

“…Meanwhile, in very promising work of the last few years, p-Si has been demonstrated to produce 10% efficient devices using light-trapping schemes to increase the effective thickness of the silicon layer (Fig. 4) (Green et al, 2004;Yamamoto, 1999).…”

Section: Second-generation Pvmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, PV based on CdTe and CIGS has been slow to scale up. This is partly due to the gap between lab efficiencies (above) and the best module efficiencies of 10.7% for CdTe and 13.4% for CIGS (Green et al, 2004) that are low as a result of unresolved issues relating to poor material reproducibility and uniformity over large areas (see, for example, Compaan et al, 1999;Noufi and Zweibel, 2006). Though perhaps the fundamental issue for both CdTe and CIGS technologies is the historical absence of symbiosis with a highly profitable IC industry.…”

Section: Second-generation Pvmentioning

confidence: 99%

Photovoltaic technologies

2008

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a b s t r a c tPhotovoltaics is already a billion dollar industry. It is experiencing rapid growth as concerns over fuel supplies and carbon emissions mean that governments and individuals are increasingly prepared to ignore its current high costs. It will become truly mainstream when its costs are comparable to other energy sources. At the moment, it is around four times too expensive for competitive commercial production. Three generations of photovoltaics have been envisaged that will take solar power into the mainstream. Currently, photovoltaic production is 90% first-generation and is based on silicon wafers. These devices are reliable and durable, but half of the cost is the silicon wafer and efficiencies are limited to around 20%. A second generation of solar cells would use cheap semiconductor thin films deposited on low-cost substrates to produce devices of slightly lower efficiency. A number of thin-film device technologies account for around 5-6% of the current market. As second-generation technology reduces the cost of active material, the substrate will eventually be the cost limit and higher efficiency will be needed to maintain the cost-reduction trend. Third-generation devices will use new technologies to produce high-efficiency devices. Advances in nanotechnology, photonics, optical metamaterials, plasmonics and semiconducting polymer sciences offer the prospect of cost-competitive photovoltaics. It is reasonable to expect that cost reductions, a move to second-generation technologies and the implementation of new technologies and third-generation concepts can lead to fully costcompetitive solar energy in 10-15 years.

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“…CIS technology has brought in new players such as Honda motors (Japan) [6]. Moreover, except for CSG solar [7], all other industries want to use cells based on nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si) in combination with amorphous silicon (a-Si) in a tandem (so-called "micromorph") or triple junction concept (Kaneka Co. [8], Sharp Co. [9], Unisolar Co. [10]) to achieve high stable efficiencies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%