TY - GEN
T1 - Development of 40 μm thin flexible silicon heterojunction solar cells
AU - Balaji, Pradeep
AU - Dauksher, William J.
AU - Bowden, Stuart
AU - Augusto, André
N1 - Funding Information:
This material was based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium under Award Number DE-EE0004946 and 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. EECϋ1041895.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 IEEE.
PY - 2018/11/26
Y1 - 2018/11/26
N2 - Large-scale production of flexible solar cells is paving the way to portable, low cost power devices. Whereas energy conversion of commercial devices is in the range of 5-15 %, our goal is to manufacture low cost, flexible solar cells with efficiencies over 20%. In this paper we present our latest development on flexible silicon heterojunction solar cells using 40 μm thin silicon wafers. Currently, sputtering induces surface damage which leads to an open circuit voltage drop of 15-20 mV when compared to implied open circuit voltages. The degradation of minority carrier lifetime after sputtering can be mitigated, from a maximum of 38% down to 17%, through a 70% reduction in the DC plasma power, thereby increasing the reliability of the process. We experimentally demonstrate average minority carrier lifetimes over 1300 μs and iVOC over 760 mV for 40 μm thin wafers.
AB - Large-scale production of flexible solar cells is paving the way to portable, low cost power devices. Whereas energy conversion of commercial devices is in the range of 5-15 %, our goal is to manufacture low cost, flexible solar cells with efficiencies over 20%. In this paper we present our latest development on flexible silicon heterojunction solar cells using 40 μm thin silicon wafers. Currently, sputtering induces surface damage which leads to an open circuit voltage drop of 15-20 mV when compared to implied open circuit voltages. The degradation of minority carrier lifetime after sputtering can be mitigated, from a maximum of 38% down to 17%, through a 70% reduction in the DC plasma power, thereby increasing the reliability of the process. We experimentally demonstrate average minority carrier lifetimes over 1300 μs and iVOC over 760 mV for 40 μm thin wafers.
KW - ITO thin film
KW - SHJ cells
KW - carrier lifetime
KW - flexible cells
KW - silicon
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U2 - 10.1109/PVSC.2018.8547385
DO - 10.1109/PVSC.2018.8547385
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85059879990
T3 - 2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018 - A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC and 34th EU PVSEC
SP - 2100
EP - 2103
BT - 2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018 - A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC and 34th EU PVSEC
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 7th IEEE World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, WCPEC 2018
Y2 - 10 June 2018 through 15 June 2018
ER -