Abstract
Solar cells with efficiencies as high as 18.6% (1 cm2 area) have been achieved by a process which involves impurity gettering and effective back surface passivation on 0.65 Ω-cm multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) grown by the heat exchanger method (HEM). This represents the highest reported solar cell efficiency on mc-Si to date. PCD analysis revealed that the bulk lifetime (τb) in HEM samples after phosphorus gettering can be as high as 135 μs. This increases the impact of the back surface recombination velocity (Sb) on the solar cell performance. By incorporating a deeper aluminum BSF, the Sb for solar cells in this study was lowered from 10,000 cm/s to 2,000 cm/s on HEM mc-Si. This combination of high τb and moderately low Sb resulted in the record high efficiency mc-Si solar cell. Model calculations indicate that lowering Sb further can raise the efficiency of untextured HEM mc-Si solar cells above 19.0%, thus closing the efficiency gap between good quality, untextured single crystal and mc-Si solar cells.
Original language | American English |
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Pages | 741-744 |
Number of pages | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1996 |
Externally published | Yes |
Event | Proceedings of the 1996 25th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference - Washington, DC, USA Duration: 13 May 1996 → 17 May 1996 |
Conference
Conference | Proceedings of the 1996 25th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference |
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City | Washington, DC, USA |
Period | 13/05/96 → 17/05/96 |
NREL Publication Number
- NREL/CP-22394