Optical Enhancement of Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells With Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Carbide Emitter

Author

Dong Zhang ; Deligiannis, Dimitrios ; Papakonstantinou, Georgios ; van Swaaij, Rene A. C. M. M. ; Zeman, M.

Author_Institution

Photovoltaic Mater. & Devices, Delft Univ. of Technol., Delft, Netherlands

Volume

4

Issue

6

fYear

2014

fDate

Nov. 2014

Firstpage

1326

Lastpage

1330

Abstract

In this paper, the electrical and optical properties of p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC:H) are compared with p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) widely used as emitter material of silicon heterojunction solar cells. The difference in solar-cell performance of the two emitters shows that p-type a-SiC:H emitter is able to enhance the short-circuit current density (J_sc) by reducing the parasitic absorption loss and reflection loss without degrading the electrical performance of devices. The application of the p-type a-SiC:H emitter can lead to a J_sc increase of about 1 mA/cm², compared with the p-type a-Si:H emitter. Our silicon heterojunction solar cell with p-type a-SiC:H emitter shows an active-area efficiency of 20.8% and the short-circuit current density of 40.3 mA/cm².

Keywords

amorphous semiconductors; current density; elemental semiconductors; hydrogen; semiconductor heterojunctions; short-circuit currents; silicon; silicon compounds; solar cells; wide band gap semiconductors; SiC:H-Si; active-area efficiency; electrical properties; optical properties; p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon carbide emitter; parasitic absorption loss; reflection loss; short-circuit current density; silicon heterojunction solar cells; Absorption; Heterojunctions; Indium tin oxide; Photovoltaic cells; Silicon carbide; Stimulated emission; Amorphous silicon carbide; emitter; heterojunction silicon solar cell;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photovoltaics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

2156-3381

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JPHOTOV.2014.2344768

Filename

6881639