Title
Toward High Solar Cell Efficiency with Low Material Usage: 15% Efficiency with 14 μm Polycrystalline Silicon on Glass
Date Issued
01 June 2020
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Garud S.
Trinh C.T.
Abou-Ras D.
Stannowski B.
Schlatmann R.
Amkreutz D.
Institute for Silicon Photovoltaics
Publisher(s)
Wiley-VCH Verlag
Abstract
Liquid-phase-crystallized silicon (LPC-Si) is a bottom-up approach to creating solar cells with the potential to avoid material loss and energy usage in wafer slicing techniques. A desired thickness of silicon (5–40 μm) is crystallized with a line-shaped energy source, which is a laser, herein. The first part reports the efforts to optimize amorphous silicon contact layers for better surface passivation. The second part covers laser firing on the electron contact. It enables a controllable trade-off between charge collection and fill factor (FF) by creating a low resistance contact, while preserving a-Si:H (i) passivation in other areas. Short-circuit current density (JSC) is observed to be up to 33:1 mA cm−2, surpassing all previously reported values for this technology. Open-circuit voltage (VOC) of up to 658 mV also exceeded every previous value published at a low bulk doping concentration (1 × 1016 cm−3). Laser firing reduced JSC by 0:6 mA cm−2 on average but improved the FF by 22.5% absolute on average, without any significant effect on VOC. Collectively, these efforts have helped in achieving a new in-house record efficiency for LPC-Si of 15.1% and show a potential to reach 16% efficiency in the near future with optimization of series resistance.
Volume
4
Issue
6
Number
2000058
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería de materiales
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85086078971
Source
Solar RRL
ISSN of the container
2367198X
Sponsor(s)
Financial support from the European Regional Development fund and the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia in the framework of the Up-LLPC Project (grant nos. EFRE-0800580 and EU-1-2-037C) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors would like to thank Martin Muske and Matthias Zelt for their help with solar cell preparation, and Holger Rhein and Christof Schultz for supervising the Rofin laser system. Special thanks are due to Ulrike Bloeck for the TEM specimen preparation and imaging.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus