High Performance Porous Silicon Solar Cell Development: Final Report, 1 October 1993 - 30 September 1995

The goal of the program was to demonstrate the use of porous silicon in new solar cell structures. Porous silicon technology has been developed at Spire for producing visible light-emitting diodes (LEDs). We demonstrated the following major aspects: porous silicon active layers have been made to show photovoltaic action; porous silicon surface layers can act as antireflection coating to improvethe performance of single-crystal silicon solar cells; porous silicon surface layers can act as antireflection coatings on polycrystalline silicon solar cells. One problem with the use of porous silicon is the inability to achieve good lateral conduction of electrons and holes through the material. This problem shows up in terms of poor blue response and photocurrents that increase with reversebias applied to the diode