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Identification of the loss factors and mechanisms in epitaxial thin film solar cells for the attainment of a 17% efficient epitaxial solar cell.
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Identification of the loss factors and mechanisms in epitaxial thin film solar cells for the attainment of a 17% efficient epitaxial solar cell The goal of the thesis is to identify and quantify the loss factors and mechanisms specific to epitaxial thin film solar cells. Epitaxial solar cells are different to bulk cells in that a low-cost, low-quality substrate is used which merely acts as a mechanical support while the active cell is confined to a thin epitaxial layer, grown on top of this low-quality substrate (wafer equivalent concept). This active layer is separated from the substrate by means of a porous Silicon barrier layer (which prevents impurity out-diffusion), while also acting as back-reflector for better light confinement. By virtue of its unique structure, several unknown factors which could limit efficiency are introduced, for e.g. the effective interface recombination velocities at the porous Silicon-epitaxial Silicon interface is not known. By means of modeling and simulations using the Sentaurus TCAD package in combination with various characterization techniques, this thesis aims to elucidate the different bottlenecks that exist for the efficiency improvements in this particular type of solar cells. In addition to simulations, several experiments would be conducted to extract key parameters related to the solar cell performance, which would aid in the refinement of the simulation results. Finally, based on the outcome of the simulations and experiments, new designs, process steps or methods could be implemented in the baseline process to eventually attain reproducible cell efficiencies of 17% for this kind of solar cells.
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Project number:
3E090921
Duration of the project:
08.09.2009 - 08.09.2013
Onderzoek met eigen middelen
Nederlands
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