Ultrathin Crystalline Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cell Integrated on Silicon-on-Insulator Substrate

To achieve power generation on IC chips, a hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H)/crystalline silicon (c-Si) heterojunction solar cell was designed and fabricated on silicon-on-insulator substrate, where a 9-μm epitaxial p-type c-Si layer served as light absorption layer and the buried SiO2 as back surface passivation layer. It was found that a 1-μm heavily doped thin p± layer was vital for improving the cell performances. Efficiency up to 12.7% with an open-circuit voltage of 679.7 mV was achieved on a 1.0-cm2 square cell. The device performance was also investigated by annealing at different temperatures. The results suggested that a relatively large thickness of a-Si:H and transparent conductive oxide layers could improve thermal stability of the solar cells at temperature above 300 °C.

[1]  Liping Zhang,et al.  Influence of precursor a-Si:H dehydrogenation on the aluminum induced crystallization process , 2014 .

[2]  Saeed Khosroabadi,et al.  Design of a high efficiency ultrathin CdS/CdTe solar cell using back surface field and backside distributed Bragg reflector. , 2014, Optics express.

[3]  Ajeet Rohatgi,et al.  Ion-implanted and screen-printed large area 20% efficient N-type front junction Si solar cells , 2014 .

[4]  Zhengxin Liu,et al.  High mobility transparent conductive W-doped In2O3 thin films prepared at low substrate temperature and its application to solar cells , 2014 .

[5]  Chenson Chen,et al.  SOI circuits powered by embedded solar cell , 2011, IEEE 2011 International SOI Conference.

[6]  D. Flandre,et al.  High-efficiency solar cell embedded in SOI substrate for ULP autonomous circuits , 2009, 2009 IEEE International SOI Conference.

[7]  C. Honsberg,et al.  High performance thin crystalline silicon solar cell grown on silicon-on-insulator , 2009, 2009 34th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC).

[8]  H. Fujiwara,et al.  Effects of a‐Si:H layer thicknesses on the performance of a‐Si:H∕c‐Si heterojunction solar cells , 2007 .

[9]  C. Clerc,et al.  Structure and hydrogen content of polymorphous silicon thin films studied by spectroscopic ellipsometry and nuclear measurements , 2004 .

[10]  Y. K. Kim,et al.  Effect of design parameters on the efficiency of the solar cells fabricated using SOI structure , 2003 .

[11]  Joseph M. Kahn,et al.  An autonomous 16 mm/sup 3/ solar-powered node for distributed wireless sensor networks , 2002, Proceedings of IEEE Sensors.

[12]  H. Takakura,et al.  Numerical analysis of silicon-on-insulator thin-film solar cells , 1994, Proceedings of 1994 IEEE 1st World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion - WCPEC (A Joint Conference of PVSC, PVSEC and PSEC).

[13]  J. Pankove,et al.  Amorphous silicon as a passivant for crystalline silicon , 1979 .

[14]  J. Dziewior,et al.  Auger coefficients for highly doped and highly excited silicon , 1977 .

[15]  W. Read,et al.  Statistics of the Recombinations of Holes and Electrons , 1952 .

[16]  H. Wagemann,et al.  Monolithic series-interconnection for a thin film silicon solar cell , 2001 .