Relatively high cost of energy produced by solar cells prevents them from being used widely. One of the ways to address this problem is to create new, cost efficient solar cell production technologies. This presentation analyzes how, by applying self-formation principles it is possible to decrease number of photolithography processes used in high efficiency solar cell production, thus significantly reducing the cost of solar cell itself. All known planar technologies can be described based on self-formation principles; new microchip and integrated circuit technologies were created using self-formation as well. It is therefore natural to extend self-formation to solar cell technology. This presentation provides specific aspects of self-formation simulation as related to solar-cell technology. The object of the simulation is a cross-section of solar cell in two-dimensional Euclidean space and it.s evolution over time. Such kind of solar cell approximation simplifies the model, yet keeps all essential characteristics of the solar cell. The cross-section contains geometrical figures which approximate objects in the solar cell. Each figure is assigned with an integer parameter, approximating physical material. According to self-formation principles, evolution of each figure depends only on geometrical configuration of the figure itself, the parameter and interaction rules. Interaction rules define change of neighbouring points and approximate technological processes (etching, oxidation, coating etc). Combination of such processes enables construction of required solar cell configuration, with only minimum use of photolithography processes. Self-formation is simulated by two-dimensional 8-neighbour cellular automata based mechanism.
Industrial Silicon Wafer Solar Cells
