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Optimize Solar Cell Performance: Dragicavasileska

1) Three methods for solar cell surface passivation were explored: aluminum back surface field, boron back surface field, and dielectric passivation using thermal oxidation or silicon nitride layers. 2) Decent surface passivation quality was achieved for each method, with aluminum BSF showing 230 cm/s surface recombination velocity and thermal oxidation/low-frequency silicon nitride achieving 51 cm/s. 3) Three solar cell structures were proposed applying the surface passivation methods: aluminum BSF only, aluminum BSF with dielectric passivation, and boron BSF with dielectric passivation. The final step was to assess the surface recombination velocity of the back surfaces.

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51 views45 pages

Optimize Solar Cell Performance: Dragicavasileska

1) Three methods for solar cell surface passivation were explored: aluminum back surface field, boron back surface field, and dielectric passivation using thermal oxidation or silicon nitride layers. 2) Decent surface passivation quality was achieved for each method, with aluminum BSF showing 230 cm/s surface recombination velocity and thermal oxidation/low-frequency silicon nitride achieving 51 cm/s. 3) Three solar cell structures were proposed applying the surface passivation methods: aluminum BSF only, aluminum BSF with dielectric passivation, and boron BSF with dielectric passivation. The final step was to assess the surface recombination velocity of the back surfaces.

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hassan499
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OPTIMIZE SOLAR CELL

PERFORMANCE
DRAGICA VASILESKA
MINIMIZE LOSSES IN SOLAR CELLS
 Optical loss
 Concentration of light
 Minimize Shadowing

Trapping of light:

 AR coatings
 Mirrors ( metallization rear surface or growing
active layers on top of a Bragg stack)
 textured surface

 Photon recycling
reabsorption of photons emitted by radiative recombination inside the cell

 Electrical Loss
 Surface passivation
 Resistive loss
……
OPTICAL LOSS
CONCENTRATION OF LIGHT
MINIMIZE SHADOWING

• Light enters through the window normal to the top surface defined by
the metal contact.
• No carriers are generated by the light under the metal contact as it is
reflected back.
• Carriers generated by light entering through the window diffuse to the
region below the metal contact due to density gradient. These carriers
generated near the space charge region contribute to the current
produced by the solar cell.
• Surface recombination takes place on the surface of the window which
reduces the efficiency of the solar cell.
ADVANCED METALIZATION

Prevent obscuration of the solar cell or high reflection and


absorption of the silver grids.

 small and high grids, which will become smaller towards the edge of
the cell

COSIMA (Contacts to a-Si:H passivated wafers


by means of annealing):
 Amorphous silicon (silane process) on mono-

crystalline silicon
 Aluminium on theses layers results in

contacting the monocrystalline silicon


 Process temperature ~ 200°C

 No photolithography
Solar cell with a-Si:H-rear passivation and COSIMA contacts
Advantages:
 Simplifies thin film manufacturing process
 Efficiency values about 20%

Combination with doted contacts:


 Screen printed interface layer (little holes)  good passivation
 Aluminium on the interface layer  COSIMA

Advantages:
 Can be used on thinner wafers  no bending
 The passivation abbility of the amorphous layer will be kept after the
annealing process
 The contact resistivity is 15mΩcm2
 Increase of the quantum yield in the infrared wavelength range
 Reduces Seff to 100 cm/s (4% metallization)
EWT/MWT
Emitter Wrap through (EWT)

• Emitter on the front surface is wraped with the rear surface by little holes
• Edges of the holes are also emitter areas, which transport emitter current
• Power-conveying busbars and the grid are moved to the rear surface
• Use double sided carrier collection (n+pn+)  increases the efficiency
• 100µm holes are made by laser

Front (left) and rear (right) of a EWT-solar cell. The front contacts
EWT- cell with n+pn+ - structure
are brought to the rear of the solar cell by many dots.
Advantages:
• Eliminate grid obscuration  no high doping  high Isc  high efficiency
• n+pn+- structure  use lower quality solar grade silicon
• Uniform optical appereance  improves asthetics
• Silicon solar cell < 200μm
• Efficiency around 18%
• gain in active cell area
•Diffusion length can be reduced to the half

Disadvantage:
Manufacturing process is very complex

 Metal wrap throug (MWT)


• Absence of the bus bars (on the rear side)  connection by holes
• Less serial resistance losses because of interconnection of the modules MWT-cell
on the back
• FF ~77%; efficiency ~ 16%
TRAPPING OF LIGHT:
ANTI-REFLECTION COATINGS
• Antireflection Coatings
Anti-reflection coatings on solar cells are similar to
those used on other optical equipment such as
camera lenses. They consist of a thin layer of
dielectric material, with a specially chosen thickness
so that interference effects in the coating cause the
wave reflected from the anti-reflection coating top
surface to be out of phase with the wave reflected
from the semiconductor surfaces. These out-of-
phase reflected waves destructively interfere with
one another, resulting in zero net reflected energy.
TRAPPING OF LIGHT:
METALLIZATION OF A REAR SURFACE
TRAPPING OF LIGHT:
TEXTURED SURFACE
Examples of light trapping

 advantages:
 At least second reflection

 The effective absorption length of the silicon layer will be


reduced  the light way through the layer increases
 The area of the surface becomes bigger

 Total reflection on the inside of the front layer possible

 Reflection can be reduced about 9/10 of the former reflection


PHOTON RECYCLING

• The re-absorption of photons emitted in a


semiconductor material as a consequence of radiative
recombinations, a process referred to as photon
recycling (PR), has been researched into for several
decades because of its primary influence in increasing
the minority carrier lifetime and related parameters.
• Solar cells with direct bandgap materials and high-
absorption coefficients are firm candidates to show PR
effects, leading to an improvement in the conversion
efficiency of up to 1-2% in absolute terms for cells with
conventional designs.
• However, the formal modeling of PR effects requires the
inclusion of additional terms in the standard set of
semiconductor equations and researchers usually tend
to neglect its influence, because of the lack of available
tools for an easy evaluation of this phenomenon in their
particular devices.
ELECTRICAL LOSS
SURFACE PASSIVATION:
MOTIVATION

• For solar cells to be able to compete with


other electricity sources, $/Watt needs to be
reduced:
• Improve efficiency
• Reduce production cost

• For high-efficiency cells, good front and


back surface passivation is mandatory

29
INTRODUCTION

Light e- e- e- e-

Emitter Bulk
Front Back

n+ p

• Surface recombination velocity (SRV) is the


figure of merit for passivation quality
• Lower is better
• Below 200 cm/s is decent
30
1. Thermal oxidation:

 Reduction of the density of states on the interface or surface


 Oxygen streams over the hot wafer surface and reacts with
silicon to SiO2
 This results in an amorphous layer
 Temperature of the process ~ 1000°C
 Thickness of the layer > 35nm  efficiency decreases
 Time goes on and the velocity of the growth of the oxidic
layer decreases
2. Passivation with SiNx

 Reduction of the density of states on the interface


 Gases silane SiH4 and methane NH3 form a layer of Si3N4
 Temperature of the process ~ 350°C
 Passivation quality rises with silane amount
 S ~ 20 cm/s – 240 cm/s depending on the refraction index

 advantages:
 lower production temperature

 Nitride seems also to work better as an anti reflection layer for


solar cells
 better passivation
3. Passivation with only silane

 The quality of the passivation is enormous


 Passivation layer on the emitter should be
very thin (10nm)
 high absorption  prefer SiNx-Process on
the emitter
 The process temperature is ~225°C

 The passivation seems independet of


contaminations of the silicon surface
Passivierqualität als Funktion der a-Si:H-Schichtdicke
brought in during the manufacturing
process
 An example is the HIT-Solar Cell from Sanyo

 Layer of monocristalline silicon between


amorphous silicon layers
HIT solar cell
 Efficiency of ~ 18,5%
4. Back Surface Field (BSF)
A thin layer of p-doped material to prevent the minorities from moving to
the back contact where they recombinate
e.g. use aluminium for a back contact, which melts (T ~ 500°C) into the
silicon and creates a positive doped BSF. Besides it serves as a
reflection layer.
PROCEDURE: 4 STEPS

Choose the basic passivation methods

Achieve decent quality of passivation


on each of the chosen methods

Apply the methods on actual solar cells

Assess SRV
35
Step 1: CHOOSE THE BASIC PASSIVATION
METHODS
• Three basic methods for passivation were chosen

Method Mechanism

1. Al-back surface field


Creates an electric field
(Al-BSF) that pushes carriers away
2. Boron-BSF from the surface

Reduces trap levels at the


3. Dielectric passivation
surface

36
ACHIEVE DECENT QUALITY OF
Step 2: PASSIVATION ON EACH OF THE
CHOSEN METHODS
• Al-BSF
• Method for uniform Al-BSF was established
• SRV of 230 cm/s was obtained

• Dielectric passivation
• RTO/LF-SiNx provided the best passivation
• SRV of 51 cm/s was obtained by RTO/LF-SiNx
(without electrical contacts)

• Boron-BSF
• Results indicated promisingly low SRV
37
Step 3: APPLY THE METHODS ON ACTUAL
SOLAR CELLS

• Three solar cells structures were proposed

(1) (2) (3)


Al-BSF Al-BSF+Dielectric Boron-BSF+Dielectric

Si solar cell Si solar cell Si solar cell

Al-BSF Al-BSF Boron-BSF

Metal Meta DielectricMetal


Dielectric
l

38
STEP 4: Assess SRV

SRV of the back surface Bulk lifetime

Long-wavelength
internal quantum efficiency (IQE)

• SRV can be obtained by measuring IQE and


bulk lifetime

39
RESISTIVE LOSS

• Equations analytical

I = I ph − Is ( e V/VT
− 1)

Open Circuit:
I = 0, V=Voc

Short Circuit:
V=0, I=Isc
Maximum power point (MMP)
Wilson s. 209
depends on:
• Temperature
• Irradiance
• Solar cell characteristics

Fill factor
Efficency coefficent

 Performance of solar cell


Open Circuit:
I = 0, V=Voc

Short Circuit:
V=0, I=Isc

The power produced by the cell in Watts can be easily calculated


along the I-V sweep by the equation P=IV. At the ISC and VOC
points, the power will be zero and the maximum value for power will
occur between the two. The voltage and current at this maximum
power point are denoted as VMP and IMP respectively.
During operation, the efficiency of solar cells is reduced by the
dissipation of power across internal resistances. These parasitic
resistances can be modeled as a parallel shunt resistance (RSH)
and series resistance (RS).
For an ideal cell, RSH would be infinite and would not provide
an alternate path for current to flow, while RS would be zero,
resulting in no further voltage drop before the load.
Decreasing RSH and increasing Rs will decrease the fill factor
(FF) and PMAX as shown in the figure on the next slide. If RSH is
decreased too much, VOC will drop, while increasing RS excessively
can cause ISC to drop instead.
Decrease in the FF due to RS and RSH.
It is possible to approximate the series and shunt resistances, RS and
RSH, from the slopes of the I-V curve at VOC and ISC, respectively. The
resistance at Voc, however, is at best proportional to the series
resistance but it is larger than the series resistance. RSH is represented
by the slope at ISC. Typically, the resistances at ISC and at VOC will be
measured and noted.

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