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Modeling the Performance of Biaxially-Textured Silicon Solar Cells

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2014

Joel B. Li  and
Bruce M. Clemens
Joel B. Li
Affiliation:
Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Bruce M. Clemens
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
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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.

Keywords

texturephotovoltaicgrain boundaries
Type
Articles
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1670: Symposium H – Advances in the Characterization, Performance and Defect Engineering of Earth Abundant and Thin Film Materials for Solar Energy Conversion , 2014 , mrss14-1670-h02-07
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2014 

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