Front surface engineering of high efficiency Si solar cells and Ge TPV cells

Author

Faur, M. ; Faur, M. ; Bailey, S.G. ; Flood, D.J. ; Brinker, D.J. ; Wheeler, D.R. ; Alterovitz, S.A. ; Scheiman, David ; Mateescu, Georgiana ; Faulk, J. ; Goradia, C. ; Goradia, M.

Author_Institution

SPECMAT Inc., North Olmsted, OH, USA

fYear

1997

fDate

29 Sep-3 Oct 1997

Firstpage

847

Lastpage

851

Abstract

We demonstrate the effectiveness of using wet chemical techniques for Si and Ge planar surfaces to form nanoporous layers, and grow stable passivating oxide layers on planar and porous surfaces, after the front grid metallization step. Our results show that this passivated chemical oxide layer: (i) can serve as an effective window/first layer AR coating, (ii) is chemically, thermally and UV stable, (iii) can simplify the structure of Si, Ge and III-V based space solar cells, thereby reducing cost, and (iv) has the potential of improving the BOL and especially the EOL efficiency of Si and III-V based space solar cells

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; coating techniques; elemental semiconductors; germanium; passivation; photovoltaic cells; porous materials; semiconductor growth; silicon; solar cells; space vehicle power plants; Ge; Ge TPV cells; Ge planar surfaces; III-V based space solar cells; Si; Si planar surfaces; UV stable layer; chemically stable layer; cost reduction; efficiency improvement; first layer AR coating; front grid metallization step; front surface engineering; high efficiency Si solar cells; nanoporous layers; passivated chemical oxide layer; passivating oxide layers; porous surfaces; thermally stable layer; thermophotovoltaic cells; wet chemical techniques; Chemicals; Coatings; Etching; Floods; III-V semiconductor materials; Metallization; NASA; Passivation; Photovoltaic cells; Surface engineering;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 1997., Conference Record of the Twenty-Sixth IEEE

Conference_Location

Anaheim, CA

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-3767-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.1997.654220

Filename

654220