Light harvesting schemes for high efficiency thin film silicon solar cells

Despeisse, M.; Boccard, Mathieu; Battaglia, Corsin; Bugnon, G.; Charrière, Mathieu; Garcia, Loïc; Bonnet-Eymard, Maximilien; Escarré, Jordi; Cuony, Peter; Stückelberger, Michael; Parascandolo, Gaetano; Hänni, Simon; Löfgren, Linus; Schüttauf, Jan‐Willem; Ding, Laura; Nicolay, Sylvain; Meillaud, Fanny; Ballif, Christophe

doi:10.1109/pvsc.2012.6318218

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…The best stabilized efficiency of 11.6% is obtained with these cells. This is close to state-of-the-art efficiencies, as reported by Unisolar [43,44], and to some extent 1 cm 2 p-i-n cells developed in-house [45]. The EQE spectra of the best cell on a Type 4b substrate as well the cross section of the cell are displayed in Fig.…”

Section: Interdependence Of the Substrate And Air Roughnesses On Micrsupporting

confidence: 83%

New progress in the fabrication of n–i–p micromorph solar cells for opaque substrates

Biron

Hänni

Boccard

et al. 2013

Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

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a b s t r a c tIn this paper, we investigate tandem amorphous/microcrystalline silicon solar cells with asymmetric intermediate reflectors grown in the n-i-p substrate configuration. We compare different types of substrates with respect to their light-trapping properties as well as their influence on the growth of single-junction microcrystalline cells. Our most promising back reflector combines a textured zinc oxide film grown by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition, a silver film for reflection, and a zinc oxide buffer layer. Grown on this substrate, microcrystalline cells exhibit excellent response in the infrared while keeping high open-circuit voltage and fill factor, leading to efficiencies of up to 10.0%. After optimizing the morphology of the asymmetric intermediate reflector, we achieve an n-i-p micromorph solar cell stabilized efficiency of 11.6%, using 270 nm and 1.7 mm of silicon for the absorber layer of the amorphous top cell and the microcrystalline bottom cell, respectively. Using this original device architecture, we reach efficiencies close to those of state-of-the-art n-i-p and p-i-n micromorph devices, demonstrating a promising route to deposit high-efficiency thin-film silicon solar cells on opaque substrates.

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Section: Interdependence Of the Substrate And Air Roughnesses On Micrsupporting

confidence: 83%

New progress in the fabrication of n–i–p micromorph solar cells for opaque substrates

Biron

Hänni

Boccard

et al. 2013

Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

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“…The state-of-the-art tandem a-Si:H/ c-Si:H solar cells have achieved initial efficiency of over 13.5% and stabilized at around 12% on the sized cells in laboratory scale [15,[29][30][31][32] and the module efficiency of over 10% [15,30,31]. The tandem solar cells that are used in this experiment are fabricated with standard process reported in [27].…”

Section: Tandem Thin-film Silicon Solar Cells Employing Snowmentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly Reflective Dielectric Back Reflector for Improved Efficiency of Tandem Thin-Film Solar Cells

Barugkin

Paetzold

Catchpole

et al. 2016

International Journal of Photoenergy

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We report on the prototyping and development of a highly reflective dielectric back reflector for application in thin-film solar cells. The back reflector is fabricated by Snow Globe Coating (SGC), an innovative, simple, and cheap process to deposit a uniform layer of TiO 2 particles which shows remarkably high reflectance over a broad spectrum (average reflectance of 99% from 500 nm to 1100 nm). We apply the highly reflective back reflector to tandem thin-film silicon solar cells and compare its performance with conventional ZnO:Al/Ag reflector. By using SGC back reflector, an enhancement of 0.5 mA/cm 2 in external quantum efficiency of the bottom solar cell and an absolute value of 0.2% enhancement in overall power conversion efficiency are achieved. We also show that the increase in power conversion efficiency is due to the reduction of parasitic absorption at the back contact; that is, the use of the dielectric reflector avoids plasmonic losses at the reference ZnO:Al/Ag back reflector. The Snow Globe Coating process is compatible with other types of solar cells such as crystalline silicon, III-V, and organic photovoltaics. Due to its cost effectiveness, stability, and excellent reflectivity above a wavelength of 400 nm, it has high potential to be applied in industry.

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