Input Parameters for the Simulation of Silicon Solar Cells in 2014

Abstract

Within the silicon photovoltaics (PV) community, there are many approaches, tools, and input parameters for simulating solar cells, making it difficult for newcomers to establish a complete and representative starting point and imposing high requirements on experts to tediously state all assumptions and inputs for replication. In this review, we address these problems by providing complete and representative input parameter sets to simulate six major types of crystalline silicon solar cells. Where possible, the inputs are justified and up-to-date for the respective cell types, and they produce representative measurable cell characteristics. Details of the modeling approaches that can replicate the simulations are presented as well. The input parameters listed here provide a sensible and consistent reference point for researchers on which to base their refinements and extensions.

The Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC): From conception to mass production

“…The 25% devices have a J o contribution from this region of only 15 fA/cm 2 [56], showing what is ultimately feasible. Values below 80 fA/cm 2 are suggested as feasible for commercial devices in the near term using a selective emitter approach [53], as in the PERC cells of Fig.…”

“…Commercial PERC cells still perform well short of the best laboratory devices in many ways, particularly in terms of V oc as determined by total cell J o (Eq. (1)) and resistive losses [56]. The 25% efficient PERL devices have a total J o of only 50 fA/cm 2 while a typical 20-21% efficient commercial PERC cell may have a value over 300 fA/cm 2 with over half of this coming from the emitter region [53,55,56].…”

Passivation of all-angle black surfaces for silicon solar cells

“…This programme allows the design of an IBC cell and input of carrier generation profiles based on reflection measurements, as well as front surface J0 values based on lifetime measurements. The remaining input parameters of the IBC device are summarised in table 2 and the device models used follow those described in [43]. The simulated current-voltage results are shown in Figure 9.…”

Minimising bulk lifetime degradation during the processing of interdigitated back contact silicon solar cells

“…As a validation of the model and comparison to state‐of‐the‐art for diffused junction cells from literature, the optimized geometrical parameters (Geo‐A) established in this work were compared against that of the IBC work reported in Franklin et al (Geo‐B), using both Sentaurus TCAD and Quokka. For consistency, the remaining parameters were taken from the IBC cell reported in Fell et al . The results are shown in Table .…”