• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2011.02a
• /
• pp.489-489
• /
• 2011

The effect of Si quantum dots for solar cell appications was investigated. The 5 ~ 10 nm Si nanoparticle was fabricated on p-type single and poly crystalline wafer by magnetron sputtering and laser irradiation process. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force measurement (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images showed that the Si QDs array were clearly embedded in insulating layer ($SiO_2$). Photoluminesence (PL) measurements reliably exhibited bandgap transitions with every size of Si QDs. The photo-current measurements were showed different result with size of QD and number of superlattice.

• The Journal of Information Technology
• /
• v.12 no.4
• /
• pp.19-24
• /
• 2009

Recently, for the efforts of low-carbon deduction and to solve the problems of global warming, many industrial nations in world have been strengthening positively their competitive power into the research, development and industrialization of new renewable sources of energy and clean energy. In the most promising source of photovoltaic, it is essential that the government take an initiative role to develop and industrialize the materials, ingot or wafer, solar cell, power conditioning system and photovoltaic system, and need to establish both short-term and long-term technical development of goal setting and forward plan in the direction of the technical development strategy and forward industrialization for the strengthening of world market. This paper analyze new technology, policies and the market trend of photovoltaic field which are currently strategically and actively enhancing the research, development and practical-industralization by Korea and other nations.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.123-127
• /
• 2021

This study was on electrode design for the realization of a solar cell that combines electrode formation and module integration process to overcome printing limitations. We used the passivated emitter rear contact (PERC) solar cell. Wafer size was 156.75 mm ×156.75 mm. The fabricated cell results showed that the open-circuit voltage of 649 mV, short-circuit current density of 36.15 mA/cm², fill factor of 68.5%, and efficiency of 16.06% with electrode conditions the 24BBs with the width 190 ㎛ and 90FBs with the width 45 ㎛. For improving efficiency, the characteristics of the solar cell were checked according to the change in the number of BBs and FBs and the change in line fine width. It is confirmed that the efficiency of the solar cell will be improved by increasing the number of FBs from 90 to 120, and increasing the line width of the FBs by about 10 ㎛ compared to the manufacturing solar cells.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
• /
• v.12 no.1
• /
• pp.6-16
• /
• 2024

The efficiency of silicon solar cells is approaching a theoretical limit referred to as 'the state of the art'. Consequently, maintaining efficiency is more productive than pursuing improvements the last room for limiting efficiency. One of the primary considerations in silicon module conservation is the occurrence of failures and degradation. Degradation can be mitigated during the cell manufacturing stage, unlike physical and spontaneous failure. It is mostly because the chemical reaction is triggered by the carrier generation of thermal and light injection, an inherent aspect of the solar cell environment. Therefore, numerous researchers and cell manufacturers are engaged in implementing mitigation strategies based on the physical degradation mechanism.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2011.11a
• /
• pp.245-248
• /
• 2011

Many researches have been carried out to improve light absorption in the crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication. The rear reflection is applied to increase the path length of light, resulting in the light absorption enhancement and thus the efficiency improvement mainly due to increase in short circuit current. In this paper, we manufactured the silicon solar cell using the mono crystalline silicon wafers with $156{\times}156mm^2$, 0.5~3.0 ${\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ of resistivity and p-type. After saw damage removal, the dielectric film ($SiN_x$)on the back surface was deposited, followed by surface texturing in the KOH solution. It resulted in single-side texturing wafer. Then the dielectric film was removed in the HF solution. The silicon wafers were doped with phosphorus by $POCl_3$ with the sheet resistance 50 ${\Omega}/{\Box}$ and then the silicon nitride was deposited on the front surface by the PECVD with 80nm thickness. The electrodes were formed by screen-printing with Ag and Al paste for front and back surface, respectively. The reflectance and transmittance for the single-sided and double-sided textured wafers were compared. The double-sided textured wafer showed higher reflectance and lower transmittance at the long wavelength region, compared to single-sided. The completed crystalline silicon solar cells with different back surface texture showed the conversion efficiency of 17.4% for the single sided and 17.3% for the double sided. The efficiency improvement with single-sided textured solar cell resulted from reflectance increase on back surface and light absorption enhancement.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.29 no.6
• /
• pp.370-375
• /
• 2016

In this paper, we investigated the electrical properties of crystalline silicon solar cell fabricated with Ni/Cu/Ag plating. The laser process was used to ablate silicon nitride layer as well as to form the selective emitter. Phosphoric acid layer was spin-coated to prevent damage caused by laser and formed selective emitter during laser process. As a result, the contact resistance was decreased by lower sheet resistance in electrode region. Low sheet resistance was obtained by increasing laser current, but efficiency and open circuit voltage were decreased by damage on the wafer surface. KOH treatment was used to remove the laser damage on the silicon surface prior to metalization of the front electrode by Ni/Cu/Ag plating. Ni and Cu were plated for each 4 minutes and 16 minutes and very thin layer of Ag with $1{\mu}m$ thickness was plated onto Ni/Cu electrode for 30 seconds to prevent oxidation of the electrode. The silicon solar cells with KOH treatment showed the 0.2% improved efficiency compared to those without treatment.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
• /
• v.29 no.11
• /
• pp.720-726
• /
• 2019

Recently, research on cost reduction and efficiency improvement of crystalline silicon(c-Si) photovoltaic(PV) module has been conducted. In order to reduce costs, the thickness of solar cell wafers is becoming thinner. If the thickness of the wafer is reduced, cracking of wafer may occur in high temperature processes during the c-Si PV module manufacturing process. To solve this problem, a low temperature process has been proposed. Conductive paste(CP) is used for low temperature processing; it contains Sn57.6Bi0.4Ag component and can be electrically combined with solar cells and ribbons at a melting point of $150^{\circ}C$. Use of CP in the PV module manufacturing process can minimize cracks of solar cells. When CP is applied to solar cells, the output varies with the amount of CP, and so the optimum amount of CP must be found. In this paper, in order to find the optimal CP application amount, we manufactured several c-Si PV modules with different CP amounts. The amount control of CP is fixed at air pressure (500 kPa) and nozzle diameter 22G(outer diameter 0.72Ø, inner 0.42Ø) of dispenser; only speed is controlled. The c-Si PV module output is measured to analyze the difference according to the amount of CP and analyzed by optical microscope and Alpha-step. As the result, the optimum amount of CP is 0.452 ~ 0.544 g on solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
• /
• v.32 no.spc3
• /
• pp.194-198
• /
• 2012

Crystalline silicon solar cell remains the major player in the photovoltaic marketplace with 80% of the market, despite the development of various thin film technologies. Silicon's excellent efficiency, stability, material abundance and low toxicity have helped to maintain its position of dominance. However, the cost of silicon materials remains a major barrier to reducing the cost of silicon photovoltaics. Using the crystalline silicon wafer with thinner thickness is the promising way for cost and material reduction in the solar cell production. However, the thinner the silicon wafer is, the worse bow phenomenon is induced. The bow phenomenon is observed when two or more layers of materials with different temperature expansion coefficiencies are in contact, in this case silicon and aluminum. In this paper, the solar cells were fabricated with different thicknesses of Al layer in order to reduce the bow phenomenon. With less amount of paste applications, we observed that the bow could be reduced by up to 40% of the largest value with 120 micron thickness of the wafer even though the conversion efficiency decrease by 0.5% occurred. Since the bowed wafers lead to unacceptable yield losses during the module construction, the reduction of bow is indispensable on thin crystalline silicon solar cell. In this work, we have studied on the counterbalance between the bow and conversion efficiency and also suggest the formation of enough back surface field (BSF) with thinner Al layer application.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.36 no.5
• /
• pp.442-453
• /
• 2023

Tandem or multijunction solar cells (MJSCs) can convert sunlight into electricity with higher efficiency (η) than single junction solar cells (SJSCs) by dividing the solar irradiance over sub-cells having distinct bandgaps. The efficiencies of various common SJSC materials are close to the edge of their theoretical efficiency and hence there is a tremendous growing interest in utilizing the tandem/multijunction technique. Recently, III-V materials integration on a silicon substrate has been broadly investigated in the development of III-V on Si tandem solar cells. Numerous growth techniques such as heteroepitaxial growth, wafer bonding, and mechanical stacking are crucial for better understanding of high-quality III-V epitaxial layers on Si. As the choice of growth method and substrate selection can significantly impact the quality and performance of the resulting tandem cell and the terminal configuration exhibit a vital role in the overall proficiency. Parallel and Series-connected configurations have been studied, each with its advantage and disadvantages depending on the application and cell configuration. The optimization of both growth mechanisms and terminal configurations is necessary to further improve efficiency and lessen the cost of III-V on Si tandem solar cells. In this review article, we present an overview of the growth mechanisms and terminal configurations with the areas of research that are crucial for the commercialization of III-V on Si tandem solar cells.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.160-163
• /
• 2013

We investigated the effect of light intensity and wavelength of a solar cell device by using photoconductive atomic force microscopy (PC-AFM). The $POCl_3$ diffusion doping process was used to produce a p-n junction solar cell device based on a Poly-Si wafer and the electrical properties of prepared solar cells were measured using a solar cell simulator system. The measured open circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$) is 0.59 V and the short circuit current ($I_{sc}$) is 48.5 mA. Also, the values of the fill factors and efficiencies of the devices are 0.7% and approximately 13.6%, respectively. In addition, PC-AFM, a recent notable method for nano-scale characterization of photovoltaic elements, was used for direct measurements of photoelectric characteristics in local instead of large areas. The effects of changes in the intensity and wavelength of light shining on the element on the photoelectric characteristics were observed. Results obtained through PC-AFM were compared with the electric/optical characteristics data obtained through a solar simulator. The voltage ($V_{PC-AFM}$) at which the current was 0 A in the I-V characteristic curves increased sharply up to 1.8 $mW/cm^2$, peaking and slowly falling as light intensity increased. Here, $V_{PC-AFM}$ at 1.8 $mW/cm^2$ was 0.29 V, which corresponds to 59% of the average $V_{oc}$ value, as measured with the solar simulator. Also, while light wavelength was increased from 300 nm to 1,100 nm, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) and results from PC-AFM showed similar trends at the macro scale, but returned different results in several sections, indicating the need for detailed analysis and improvement in the future.