Very thin and stable thin-film silicon alloy triple junction solar cells by hot wire chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

We present a silicon-based triple junction solar cell that requires a deposition time of less than 15 min for all photoactive layers. As a low-bandgap material, we used thin layers of hydrogenated amorphous silicon germanium with lower band gap than commonly used, which is possible due to the application of hot wire chemical vapor deposition. The triple junction cell shows an initial energy conversion efficiency exceeding 10%, and with a relative performance stability within 6%, the cell shows a high tolerance to light-induced degradation. With these results, we help to demonstrate that hot wire chemical vapor deposition is a viable deposition method for the fabrication of low-cost solar cells.

Benchmarking photoactive thin‐film materials using a laser‐induced steady‐state photocarrier grating

“…When assessing the quality of a photovoltaic absorber material, one should, apart from the photoabsorption and carrier transport properties, which affect the short‐circuit current and the fill factor, also consider other properties, such as the difference between the value of the band gap and the attainable open circuit voltage in a device: for short, the voltage deficit. Voltage deficits that have been reported for state‐of‐the art devices show that devices with a MAPbI 3‐x Cl x perovskite absorber layer (with a voltage deficit, ΔV ~ 0.4 V ) outperform the other studied materials (ΔV ~ 0.4–0.6 V for Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 , ΔV ~ 0.6 V for μc‐Si:H , ΔV ~ 0.7 V for MAPbBr 3 and ΔV ~ 0.8–0.9 V for a‐Si(Ge):H ).…”

Textured and micropillar silicon heterojunction solar cells with hot-wire deposited passivation layers

“…Thin (b 3 nm) PECVD intrinsic a-Si:H buffer layers were introduced at the i/n and i/p interface in order to improve the contact between these layers. This process is described elsewhere [17]. A schematic representation of such a device is given in Fig.…”