Modeling the Performance of Biaxially-Textured Silicon Solar Cells. Issue 1670 (18th June 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Li, Joel B.; Clemens, Bruce M.
• Is Part Of: MRS proceedings. Issue 1670:(2014)
• Publication Date: 2014-06-18
• Subjects: texture, -- photovoltaic, -- grain boundaries; Electrical engineering -- Congresses; Physics -- Congresses; Materials -- Research -- Congresses; Materials science -- Congresses; 620.11
• DOI: 10.1557/opl.2014.590
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0272-9172

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Grain boundaries (GBs) in polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) thin film solar cells are frequently found to be detrimental for device performance. Biaxiallytextured silicon with grains that are well-aligned in-plane and out-of-plane can possess fewer GB defects. In this work, we use TCAD Sentaurus device simulator and known experimental work to investigate and quantify the potential performance gains of biaxially-textured silicon. Simulation shows there can be performance gain from well-aligned grains when GB defects dominate carrier recombination or when grains are small. On the other hand, when intra-grain defects dominate recombination and grains are large, well-aligned grains do not lead to much performance gain. Another important result from our simulation is when intra-grain and GB defects are few, Jsc is almost independent of grain size while Voc drops with decreasing grain size.