Development of high-efficiency solar cells on silicon web. Third quarterly progress report, October-December 1984

Technical Report · Tue Feb 05 04:00:00 EST 1985

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/5903206· OSTI ID:5903206

Rohatgi, A.; Meier, D. L.; Campbell, R. B.; O'Keeffe, T. W.; Rai-Choudhury, P.

During this period emphasis was placed on the development of process techniques that will enhance web cell performance. The oxidation conditons to passivate web cells were established to reduce surface recombination velocity. Evaporated double-layer antireflective coating using ZnSe and MgF/sub 2/ films was developed to minimize reflection losses from the front surface. An aluminum back-surface reflector was developed to utilize the unabsorbed long-wavelength photons. Web solar cells were also fabricated by incorporating the above advanced features. Efficiencies as high as 16.9% were obtained on 1 cm x 1 cm dendritic web silicon cells on 0.37 ohm-cm web crystals. A combined effect of oxide passivation, evaporated double-layer AR coating, and back-surface reflector gave approx. 59% improvement in the short-circuit current and 69% increase in cell efficiency compared to the counterpart baseline cell with no passivation, AR coating, or back-surface reflector. During this period low-resistivity web crystals (0.37 ohm-cm, crystal No. 4-275) were also grown to take advantage of heavy doping in the base. Reasonable diffusion lengths (approx. 150 ..mu..m) were obtained in the finished low-resistivity web cells, encouraging further investigation for achieving high efficiency in web cells.

• Research Organization: Westinghouse Research and Development Center, Pittsburgh, PA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: NAS-7-100-956786
• OSTI ID: 5903206
• Report Number(s): DOE/JPL/956786-85/3; ON: DE85008302
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
140501* -- Solar Energy Conversion-- Photovoltaic Conversion
ANTIREFLECTION COATINGS
COATINGS
CRYSTAL GROWTH METHODS
DENDRITIC WEB GROWTH METHOD
DIRECT ENERGY CONVERTERS
EFFICIENCY
ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES
EQUIPMENT
FABRICATION
OPTICAL PROPERTIES
PASSIVATION
PHOTOELECTRIC CELLS
PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
QUANTUM EFFICIENCY
REFLECTION
SILICON SOLAR CELLS
SOLAR CELLS
SOLAR CONCENTRATORS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
SOLAR REFLECTORS
SPECTRAL REFLECTANCE