Investigation of Interface and Grain Boundary Recombination in mc/pc-Si Solar Cells for Flexible Substrate

One of the primary culprits for limiting the efficiency of multi-crystalline/polycrystalline silicon (mc/pc-Si)-based thin-film solar cells is interface and grain boundary (GB) recombination. In this work, a device simulation model for mc/pc-Si thin-film solar cells has been developed by considering...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Arabian journal for science and engineering (2011) 2024, Vol.49 (1), p.995-1005
Hauptverfasser: Imam, Muzaffar, Ahmed, Tauseef, Askari, Syed Sadique Anwer
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:One of the primary culprits for limiting the efficiency of multi-crystalline/polycrystalline silicon (mc/pc-Si)-based thin-film solar cells is interface and grain boundary (GB) recombination. In this work, a device simulation model for mc/pc-Si thin-film solar cells has been developed by considering multiple numbers of horizontal- and vertical-like GBs with Gaussian distributed energy levels of donor- and acceptor-like traps. Moreover, the Gaussian distribution of bulk and fixed energy level of interface defect density have been considered in this study. The performance parameters of the device, such as J SC , V OC , FF , and efficiency, have been studied by varying the grain size, interface trap density, and GB trap density. Results show that the grain size variation in the X-direction significantly impacts the device’s performance compared to the grain size in the Z-direction. Results also show that increasing interface and GB trap density for both the donor- and acceptor-like traps significantly impacts the efficiency. However, the variation of donor-like trap density has more significant impact on the device’s performance in contrast to the acceptor-like trap density. Therefore, optimizing these parameters is essential to enhance the performance of the device. Moreover, it is observed that the device’s performance significantly depends on the thickness and doping concentration of the absorber layer. For an optimized absorber of thickness 0.5 µm and doping concentration of 10 18  cm −3 , the maximum efficiency of ~ 9.1% is obtained, which is an enhancement of > 200% from an experimentally reported result. The developed model is also verified with the available experimental results.
ISSN:2193-567X
1319-8025
2191-4281
DOI:10.1007/s13369-023-07932-4