Three-Terminal Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells

Many defects exist within amorphous silicon since it is not crystalline. This provides recombination centers, thus reducing the efficiency of a typical a-Si solar cell. A new structure is presented in this paper: a three-terminal a-Si solar cell. The new back-to-back p-i-n/n-i-p structure increased...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cheng-Hung Tai, Chu-Hsuan Lin, Chih-Ming Wang, Chun-Chieh Lin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2011-01-01
Series:International Journal of Photoenergy
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/813093
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Summary:Many defects exist within amorphous silicon since it is not crystalline. This provides recombination centers, thus reducing the efficiency of a typical a-Si solar cell. A new structure is presented in this paper: a three-terminal a-Si solar cell. The new back-to-back p-i-n/n-i-p structure increased the average electric field in a solar cell. A typical a-Si p-i-n solar cell was also simulated for comparison using the same thickness and material parameters. The 0.28 μm-thick three-terminal a-Si solar cell achieved an efficiency of 11.4%, while the efficiency of a typical a-Si p-i-n solar cell was 9.0%. Furthermore, an efficiency of 11.7% was achieved by thickness optimization of the three-terminal solar cell.
ISSN:1110-662X
1687-529X