Novel profiled thin-film polycrystalline silicon solar cells on stainless steel substrates
In order to obtain higher conversion efficiencies while keeping the manufacturing cost low in thin-film PV technologies, a possible low bandgap material is amorphous silicon germanium. Although record efficiencies in excess of 15% have been reported for triple-junction solar cells comprising these alloys, concerns regarding the stability and quality of this material still need to be overcome. Another approach is the introduction of thin-film micro- or polycrystalline silicon with a band gap of 1.1 eV, deposited at a temperature that is low enough to allow cheap, foreign carrier materials. Apart from the application of a modified PECVD method utilizing frequencies in the VHF domain, the hot wire CVD (HWCVD) method appears a particularly promising technique for the deposition of high-quality, thin-film intrinsic or doped poly-Si. In this contribution, special attention will be paid to the latest developments in the application of hot-wire deposited silicon thin films in solar cells. By implementing a profiled hydrogen-diluted HWCVD growth scheme that produces a thin small-grained seed layer on top of a thin n-layer, the authors have been able to obtain fast polycrystalline growth of the intrinsic layer of an n-i-p solar cell. An efficiency of 4.41% is obtained and the fill factor is 0.607. The current density is close to 20 mA/cm{sub 2} for an i-layer that is only 1.22 {micro}m thick. The cell is deposited on plain stainless steel and thus does not comprise a back reflector.
- Research Organization:
- Utrecht Univ. (NL)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Netherlands Agency for Energy and Environment
- OSTI ID:
- 20006080
- Journal Information:
- IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), Vol. 46, Issue 10; Other Information: PBD: Oct 1999; ISSN 0018-9383
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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