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Characterisation and optimisation of amorphous silicon / crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells

R. BRÜGGEMANN1,*

Affiliation

  1. Institut für Physik, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany

Abstract

As the photovoltaic efficiency of heterojunction solar cells based on amorphous and crystalline silicon depends critically on the quality of the front and rear interfaces, characterisation techniques for intermediate steps during processing are helpful in the optimisation of these devices. Photoluminescence techniques allow the probing of the minority carrier density, which sensitively depends on the interface properties. We present modulated photoluminescence as a technique to characterise the interface quality by the determination of the excess carrier lifetime. We apply numerical simulation to illustrate various aspects of the detrimental influence of the interface defects on the photovoltaic properties and the electroluminescence yield of these devices. The simulation indicates that optimised interfaces of these heterojunction solar cells lead to high photovoltaic conversion efficiencies in excess of 23% and high electroluminescence efficiencies of 0.14%..

Keywords

Solar cells, Photoluminescence, Electroluminescence, Efficiency, Interfaces.

Submitted at: Nov. 5, 2008
Accepted at: Sept. 9, 2009

Citation

R. BRÜGGEMANN, Characterisation and optimisation of amorphous silicon / crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 11, Iss. 9, pp. 1072-1078 (2009)