TY - GEN
T1 - A Kinetic Monte Carlo approach to study transport in amorphous silicon/crystalline silicon HIT cells
AU - Muralidharan, Pradyumna
AU - Vasileska, Dragica
AU - Goodnick, Stephen
AU - Bowden, Stuart
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.
PY - 2015/12/14
Y1 - 2015/12/14
N2 - The photogenerated carriers in a-Si/c-Si HIT cells must traverse the intrinsic amorphous silicon barrier in order to be collected. As this barrier region is amorphous in nature, it contains many defect states, and thus carrier transport is mainly described by defect assisted transport. The present work applies the Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) method for the defect assisted transport by analyzing the interactions between discrete defects and discrete carriers. We explore the 'hopping' nature of transport via defects by considering the effect of phonons. The addition of phonons allows us to study non-iso-energetic transitions for injection and extraction of carriers. Once the carriers 'hop' through the barrier, they are extracted by three main mechanisms, namely, thermionic emission, Poole-Frenkel emission and phonon assisted defect emission. Simulations indicate that Poole-Frenkel emission and thermionic emission are negligible whereas emission of carriers via phonon assisted hopping is the dominant mode of extraction. The effect of different defect distributions on transport is also analyzed.
AB - The photogenerated carriers in a-Si/c-Si HIT cells must traverse the intrinsic amorphous silicon barrier in order to be collected. As this barrier region is amorphous in nature, it contains many defect states, and thus carrier transport is mainly described by defect assisted transport. The present work applies the Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) method for the defect assisted transport by analyzing the interactions between discrete defects and discrete carriers. We explore the 'hopping' nature of transport via defects by considering the effect of phonons. The addition of phonons allows us to study non-iso-energetic transitions for injection and extraction of carriers. Once the carriers 'hop' through the barrier, they are extracted by three main mechanisms, namely, thermionic emission, Poole-Frenkel emission and phonon assisted defect emission. Simulations indicate that Poole-Frenkel emission and thermionic emission are negligible whereas emission of carriers via phonon assisted hopping is the dominant mode of extraction. The effect of different defect distributions on transport is also analyzed.
KW - Monte Carlo Simulation
KW - amorphous silicon
KW - defect assisted transport
KW - device modeling
KW - solar cells
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84961674041&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/PVSC.2015.7356048
DO - 10.1109/PVSC.2015.7356048
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84961674041
T3 - 2015 IEEE 42nd Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, PVSC 2015
BT - 2015 IEEE 42nd Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, PVSC 2015
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 42nd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, PVSC 2015
Y2 - 14 June 2015 through 19 June 2015
ER -