Effects of absorber doping and post-deposition treatments on the performance of n-type poly-Si thin film solar cells on glass

Plasmonic gratings provide effective photon management techniques in thin-film solar cells, capable of extending the optical thickness of the solar cell’s active layer. However, the ultra-broadband nature of such application makes an optimal design of the grating structure quite challenging, since a fully periodic grating operates only in specific spectral ranges. To achieve a more broadband design, semiperiodicity is introduced, which, due to having controllable disorder, is an apt solution in broadband optical applications. In this work, semiperiodic double gratings as a broadband photon management technique are introduced in order to improve the optical absorption of c-Si thin-film solar cells, and optimized through numerical structural optimization. Physical parameters of both front and back gratings are determined taking the spectrally integrated optical absorption as the figure of merit and subsequently a semiperiodic double grating is established through adding defects to the fully periodic structure. It is shown that such semiperiodic structure is capable of enhancing the spectrally integrated optical absorption 88.6 % compared to a reference structure without gratings.

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Relationship between average slope of textured substrate and poly-Si thin film solar cells performance

Materials Research Innovations ◽

10.1179/143307509x440424 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 246-248 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

R. Muhida ◽

A. G. E. Sutjipto ◽

T. Toyama ◽

H. Okamoto ◽

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Solar Cells ◽

Thin Film Solar Cells ◽

Average Slope ◽

Si Thin Film

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Proton Irradiation and Annealing of a-Si Thin-Film Solar Cells for Space Applications: Results at 160 keV

3rd International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference ◽

10.2514/6.2005-5634 ◽

2005 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Simon Liu ◽

Jennifer Granata ◽

John Halpine ◽

John Nocerino ◽

Edward Simburger

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Solar Cells ◽

Proton Irradiation ◽

Thin Film Solar Cells ◽

Space Applications ◽

Si Thin Film

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Influence of Surface Morphology of Textured Substrate against Poly-Si Thin Film Solar Cells Performance

Materials Science Forum ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/msf.737.105 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 737 ◽

pp. 105-109 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Riza Muhida ◽

Toshihiko Toyama ◽

Hiroaki Okamoto

Keyword(s):

Thin Film ◽

Solar Cells ◽

Surface Morphology ◽

Light Trapping ◽

Photovoltaic Performance ◽

Thin Film Solar Cells ◽

Optical Absorption Coefficient ◽

Root Mean Square Roughness ◽

Textured Surface ◽

Si Thin Film

Since poly-Si is an indirect band gap material and has low optical absorption coefficient in the visible-infrared region, the light trapping in thin film poly-Si layer by using textured substrate is one of the important technical issue for achievement of high short current. Surface texture of a transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layer on a glass substrate as well as SnO2 with a large grain are usually utilized for the light-trapping technique, i.e., path lengths of the incident light in the poly-Si layer are effectively enhanced by the light-scattering at the textured surface. In this paper, a systematic investigation has been carried out concerning the relationship between poly-Si thin film solar cells performance and surface morphology of substrate texture as a function of root mean square roughness of substrate surface, in order to find the optimum textured substrate and realize the light trapping in the poly-Si solar cells. Furthermore, the influence of textured substrate on optical reflectance, poly-Si microstructure and photovoltaic performance are also discussed.

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