TY - CONF
T1 - A multiscale modeling approach to study transport in silicon heterojunction solar cells
AU - Muralidharan, Pradyumna
AU - Bowden, Stuart
AU - Goodnick, Stephen M.
AU - Vasileska, Dragica
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work primarily supported by the Engineering Research Center Program of the National Science Foundation and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the Department of Energy under NSF Cooperative Agreement No. EEC-1041895. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation or Department of Energy.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - In recent years, silicon photovoltaic technologies utilizing amorphous silicon (a-Si) to form heterojunction solar cells with thin passivating layers have consistently demonstrated high efficiencies (world record of 25.6%), high fill factor's (FF) and high open circuit voltages (VOC). Further improvements in efficiency require a rigorous approach to better understand and improve device behavior. In this work we analyze the transport and device performance of heterojunction cell by applying a multiscale simulation methodology. Our multiscale solver consists of three primary domains, namely; the drift-diffusion (DD) domain, the ensemble Monte Carlo (EMC) and the kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) domain. We investigate the role of midgap defects in the a-Si and interface defects at the crystalline silicon (c-Si) and a- Si heterointerface. Simulations indicate that recombination at the interface is a key limiting factor in device performance and contributes to the 'S' shaped current voltage characteristic.
AB - In recent years, silicon photovoltaic technologies utilizing amorphous silicon (a-Si) to form heterojunction solar cells with thin passivating layers have consistently demonstrated high efficiencies (world record of 25.6%), high fill factor's (FF) and high open circuit voltages (VOC). Further improvements in efficiency require a rigorous approach to better understand and improve device behavior. In this work we analyze the transport and device performance of heterojunction cell by applying a multiscale simulation methodology. Our multiscale solver consists of three primary domains, namely; the drift-diffusion (DD) domain, the ensemble Monte Carlo (EMC) and the kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) domain. We investigate the role of midgap defects in the a-Si and interface defects at the crystalline silicon (c-Si) and a- Si heterointerface. Simulations indicate that recombination at the interface is a key limiting factor in device performance and contributes to the 'S' shaped current voltage characteristic.
KW - Amorphous silicon
KW - Device modeling
KW - Heterojunction
KW - Solar cells
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U2 - 10.4071/2016dpc-tha33
DO - 10.4071/2016dpc-tha33
M3 - Paper
AN - SCOPUS:85088409106
T2 - IMAPS 12th International Conference and Exhibition on Device Packaging
Y2 - 14 March 2016 through 17 March 2016
ER -