Nanometer- and Micrometer-Scale Texturing for High-Efficiency Micromorph Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells

Christophe Ballif, Corsin Battaglia, Mustapha Benkhaira, Adrian Billet, Mathieu Gérard Boccard, Grégory Bugnon, Mathieu Charrière, Peter Cuony, Matthieu Despeisse, Laura Ding, Jordi Escarre Palou, Simon Hänni, Sylvain Nicolay, Fanny Sculati-Meillaud, Karin Söderström
2012
Article

Résumé

Optimized transparent conductive oxide front electrodes are vital to further increase the efficiency of thin-film silicon solar devices. We report details on the fabrication of multiscale textured zinc oxide substrates and their implementation in amorphous silicon/microcrystalline silicon tandem (micromorph) devices. Such substrates allow separate optimization of light trapping in the top and bottom cells, and efficient decoupling of transparency and conduction.We show in particular the need for sharp, nanoscale texturing for antireflection and light trapping in the top cell.We also show that smooth, micrometer-scale texturing can efficiently improve large-wavelength light management without degrading the quality of the silicon material grown on the substrate. By combining the appropriate morphologies, high currents can be reached in both the top and bottom subcells, while conserving the optimal electrical properties of the solar cells.

Official source

https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/174791?ln=fr

À propos de ce résultat

Cette page est générée automatiquement et peut contenir des informations qui ne sont pas correctes, complètes, à jour ou pertinentes par rapport à votre recherche. Il en va de même pour toutes les autres pages de ce site. Veillez à vérifier les informations auprès des sources officielles de l'EPFL.

Concepts associés

Chargement

Publications associées

Chargement

Effect of Substrate Morphology Slope Distributions on Light Scattering, nc-Si:H Film Growth, and Solar Cell Performance

Chunmin Zhang

Thin-film silicon solar cells are often deposited on textured ZnO substrates. The solar-cell performance is strongly correlated to the substrate morphology, as this morphology determines light scattering, defective-region formation, and crystalline growth of hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H). Our objective is to gain deeper insight in these correlations using the slope distribution, rms roughness (srms) and correlation length (lc) of textured substrates. A wide range of surface morphologies was obtained by Ar plasma treatment and wet etching of textured and flat-as-deposited ZnO substrates. The srms, lc and slope distribution were deduced from AFM scans. Especially, the slope distribution of substrates was represented in an efficient way that light scattering and film growth direction can be more directly estimated at the same time. We observed that besides a high sigma(rms), a high slope angle is beneficial to obtain high haze and scattering of light at larger angles, resulting in higher short-circuit current density of nc-Si:H solar cells. However, a high slope angle can also promote the creation of defective regions in nc-Si:H films grown on the substrate. It is also found that the crystalline fraction of nc-Si:H solar cells has a stronger correlation with the slope distributions than with srms of substrates. In this study, we successfully correlate all these observations with the solar-cell performance by using the slope distribution of substrates.

Amer Chemical Soc2014

Chargement

Development of high band gap protocrystalline material for p-i-n thin film silicon solar cells

Fabio Maurizio

High band gap thin film silicon solar cells are of high interest for the use as top cell in triple junctions solar cells. Protocrystalline silicon, in the transition phase between amorphous and microcrystalline silicon, is such a high band gap material. During this project, protocrystalline intrinsic layers have been developed and optimized in p-i-n single junction solar cells by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) in a new multi-chamber deposition system. In the first series, cells and layers were deposited with different dilutions going from silane to hydrogen flux ratios of 1:1 to 1:64. At the dilutions 1:16 and 1:32, protocrystalline ma-terial was obtained which showed amorphous characteristics only up to a certain thickness, where crystallites started to evolve. With dilution 1:16, a second cell series has been deposited with variation of the intrinsic layer thick-ness. The best cells in terms of open-circuit voltage and fill factor product were obtained with an i-layer thickness of 100 nm. These cells have open-circuit voltages and fill factors up to 0.975 V and 75.8 % (0.932 V and 69.9 %) for the initial (degraded) state. These are promising values for the use of this material in top cells. However, the low current density means that the optimum i-layer thickness is probably higher for triple cell application. Further cells have been deposited at different temperatures. These results imply that there is still room for further optimization, when current limitations of the heating system will be overcome.

2012

Chargement

Today more than ever the world needs clean energy sources and thus a fast deployment and scaling up of the photovoltaic industry. In this context improving solar cell efficiency plays a major role. In order to achieve the maximum single junction efficiency for this material, technologies featuring carrier selective passivating contacts are foreseen to be the next successors of actual industrial cells. Among them, the silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cell is a promising technology which demonstrated efficiencies up to 26.7%. Its main specificity consists in the use of intrinsic and doped amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) to provide surface passivation and carrier selectivity to the c-Si, which allows to reach very high operating voltages in comparison to other c-Si based technology. The major drawbacks of SHJ solar cell is the large parasitic absorption occurring in those layers. To address this challenge, a strong focus on alternative non-silicon based thin films with wider band gap has built up in the literature. A first part of this thesis focuses on reviewing the fundamental process behind carrier selectivity and discuss the ability of different models from the literature to draw informations directly from the peculiar shapes of IV curves commonly observed in the solar cells featuring newly developed materials. We first discuss the simple four ideal diodes model of Roe et al to explain the occurrence of S-shapes depending on the contact quality. We discuss from a theoretical point of view how to improve the model by modifying the ideal diodes by other circuit elements as well as adding bulk recombinations. We test the theory experimentally and identified modifications that should be incorporated in the model.In a second part of the thesis, we explore the development of doped nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si) layers to replace classical amorphous silicon layers. We investigate the influence of TMB and BF3 as dopant sources on the transparency and contact properties of nc-Si:H(p) layers as well as their integration in solar cells. We expose the roles of both gas to modify the crystallinity of the layer and find different optimum for both of them to lead high efficiencies, illustrated by a certified 23.9%-efficient solar cell. We report also on further optimization steps of this front junction architecture resulting in certified efficiency of 24.44%.We explore next the n-type nc-Si layers for application as window layer. In particular, we perform thickness and doping series to unravel the layer properties along its growth direction. In order to improve the low doping of the nucleation zone of nc-Si:H(n) at the i/n interface, a thin a-Si:H(n) buffer layer is introduced and shown to improve the passivation, selectivity and contact resistivity. Finally, we also report on the beneficial effect of an additional SiOx capping layer which improves both the reflection properties as well as all contact properties, broadening the optimal parameter window. The absorption loss in the front silicon layers remains however the highest share of losses, and therefore we explore theoretically the opportunity of using thinner front side layers or using thin TCO / silicon nitride bilayers to reduce the absorption losses. We finish the discussion by presenting an optimization roadmap, showing a possibility for double-side contacted SHJ cells to reach efficiencies above 26% without requiring any patterning or localization step.

EPFL2022

Chargement

EPFL2022