• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.10
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• pp.1694-1696
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• 2016

Present thin film solar cells with hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiO:H) as an absorber suffer from low fill factor(FF) of 61~64 [%] in spite of its benefits related to high open circuit voltage ($V_{oc}$). Since degraded quality of a-SiO:H absorber by alloying with oxygen can affect the FF, we aimed to achieve high photosensitivity by minimizing $CO_2$ gas addition. Improving optical gap($E_{opt}$) has been attained by strong hydrogen dilution combined with lowering substrate temperature down to 100 [$^{\circ}C$]. Small amount of the $CO_2$ was added in order to disturb microcrystalline formation by high hydrogen dilution. The developed a-SiO:H has high photosensitivity (${\sim}2{\times}10^5$) and high $E_{opt}$ of 1.85 [eV], which contributed to attain remarkable FF of 74 [%] and high $V_{oc}$ (>1 [V]). As a result, high power conversion efficiency of 7.18 [%] was demonstrated by using very thin absorber layer of only 100 [nm], even though we processed all experiment at extremely low temperature of 100 [$^{\circ}C$].

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.565-569
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• 2006

Plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition(PECVD) is a well established technique for the deposition of hydrogenated film of silicon nitride (SiNx:H), which is commonly used as an antireflection coating as well as passivating layer in crystalline silicon solar cell. PECVD-SiNx:H films were investigated by varying the deposition and annealing conditions to optimize for the application in silicon solar cells. By varying the gas ratio (ammonia to silane), the silicon nitride films of refractive indices 1.85 - 2.45 were obtained. The film deposited at $450^{\circ}C$ showed the best carrier lifetime through the film deposition rate was not encouraging. The film deposited with the gas ratio of 0.57 showed the best carrier lifetime after annealing at a temperature of $800^{\circ}C$. The single crystalline silicon solar cells fabricated in conventional industrial production line applying the optimized film deposition and annealing conditions on large area substrate of size $125mm{\times}125mm$ (pseudo square) was found to have the conversion efficiencies as high as 17.05 %. Low cost and high efficiency silicon solar cells fabrication sequence has also been explained in this paper.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.210-216
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• 2010

This paper investigates the dependence of a-Si:H/c-Si passivation and heterojunction solar cell performances on various cleaning processes of silicon wafers. It is observed that the passivation quality of a-Si:H thin-films on c-Si wafers depends highly on the initial H-termination properties of the wafer surface. The effective minority carrier lifetime (MCLT) of highly H-terminated wafer is beneficial for obtaining high quality passivation of a-Si:H/c-Si. The wafers passivated by p(n)-doped a-Si:H layers have low MCLT regardless of the initial H-termination quality. On the other hand, the MCLT of wafers incorporating intrinsic (i) a-Si:H as a passivation layer shows sensitive variation with initial cleaning and H-termination schemes. By applying the improved cleaning processes, we can obtain an MCLT of $100{\mu}sec$ after H-termination and above $600{\mu}sec$ after i a-Si:H thin film deposition. By adapting improved cleaning processes and by improving passivation and doped layers, we can fabricate a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cells with an active area conversion efficiency of 18.42%, which cells have an open circuit voltage of 0.670V, short circuit current of $37.31\;mA/cm^2$ and fill factor of 0.7374. These cells show more than 20% pseudo efficiency measured by Suns-$V_{oc}$ with an elimination of series resistance.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.11-17
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• 2013

Silicon nitride($SiN_x:H$) deposited by radio frequency plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition(RF-PECVD) is commonly used for anti-reflection coating and passivation in crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication. In this paper, characteristics of the deposited silicon nitride was studied with change of working pressure, deposition temperature, gas ratio of $NH_3$ and $SiH_4$, and RF power during deposition. The deposition rate, refractive index and effective lifetime were analyzed. The (100) p-type silicon wafers with one-side polished, $660-690{\mu}m$, and resistivity $1-10{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ were used. As a result, when the working pressure increased, the deposition rate of SiNx was increased while the effective life time for the $SiN_x$-deposited wafer was decreased. The result regarding deposition temperature, gas ratio and RF power changes would be explained in detail below. In this paper, the optimized condition in silicon nitride deposition for silicon solar cell was obtained as 1.0 Torr for the working pressure, $400^{\circ}C$ for deposition temperature, 500 W for RF power and 0.88 for $NH_3/SiH_4$ gas ratio. The silicon nitride layer deposited in this condition showed the effective life time of > $1400{\mu}s$ and the surface recombination rate of 25 cm/s. The crystalline silicon solar cell fabricated with this SiNx coating showed 18.1% conversion efficiency.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.493-493
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• 2014

The manufacturing cost of thin-film photovoltics can potentially be lowered by minimizing the amount of a semiconductor material used to fabricate devices. Thin-film solar cells are typically only a few micrometers thick, whereas crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer solar cells are $180{\sim}300\mu}m$ thick. As such, thin-film layers do not fully absorb incident light and their energy conversion efficiency is lower compared with that of c-Si wafer solar cells. Therefore, effective light trapping is required to realize commercially viable thin-film cells, particularly for indirect-band-gap semiconductors such as c-Si. An emerging method for light trapping in thin film solar cells is the use of metallic nanostructures that support surface plasmons. Plasmon-enhanced light absorption is shown to increase the cell photocurrent in many types of solar cells, specifically, in c-Si thin-film solar cells and in poly-Si thin film solar cell. By proper engineering of these structures, light can be concentrated and coupled into a thin semiconductor layer to increase light absorption. In many cases, silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NP) are formed either on the front surface or on the rear surface on the cells. In case of poly-Si thin film solar cells, Ag NPs are formed on the rear surface of the cells due to longer wavelengths are not perfectly absorbed in the active layer on the first path. In our cells, shorter wavelengths typically 300~500 nm are also not effectively absorbed. For this reason, a new concept of plasmonic nanostructure which is NPs formed both the front - and the rear - surface is worth testing. In this simulation Al NPs were located onto glass because Al has much lower parasitic absorption than other metal NPs. In case of Ag NP, it features parasitic absorption in the optical frequency range. On the other hand, Al NP, which is non-resonant metal NP, is characterized with a higher density of conduction electrons, resulting in highly negative dielectric permittivity. It makes them more suitable for the forward scattering configuration. In addition to this, Ag NP is located on the rear surface of the cell. Ag NPs showed good performance enhancement when they are located on the rear surface of our cells. In this simulation, Al NPs are located on glass and Ag NP is located on the rear Si surface. The structure for the simulation is shown in figure 1. Figure 2 shows FDTD-simulated absorption graphs of the proposed and reference structures. In the simulation, the front of the cell has Al NPs with 70 nm radius and 12.5% coverage; and the rear of the cell has Ag NPs with 157 nm in radius and 41.5% coverage. Such a structure shows better light absorption in 300~550 nm than that of the reference cell without any NPs and the structure with Ag NP on rear only. Therefore, it can be expected that enhanced light absorption of the structure with Al NP on front at 300~550 nm can contribute to the photocurrent enhancement.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.246-251
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• 2013

Screen printing is commonly used to form the front/back electrodes in silicon solar cell. But it has caused high resistance and low aspect ratio, resulting in decreased conversion efficiency in solar cell. Recently the plating method has been combined with screen-printed c-Si solar cell to reduce the resistance and improve the aspect ratio. In this paper, we investigated the effect of light induced silver plating with screen-printed c-Si solar cells and compared their electrical properties. All wafers were textured, doped, and coated with anti-reflection layer. The metallization process was carried out with screen-printing, followed by co-fired. Then we performed light induced Ag plating by changing the plating time in the range of 20 sec~5min with/without external light. For comparison, we measured the light I-V characteristics and electrode width by optical microscope. During plating, silver ions fill the porous structure established in rapid silver particle sintering during co-firing step, which results in resistance decrease and efficiency improvement. The plating rate was increased in presence of light lamp, resulting in widening the electrode with and reducing the short-circuit current by shadowing loss. With the optimized plating condition, the conversion efficiency of solar cells was increased by 0.4% due to decreased series resistance. Finally we obtained the short-circuit current of 8.66 A, open-circuit voltage of 0.632 V, fill factor of 78.2%, and efficiency of 17.8% on a silicon solar cell.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.126-134
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• 2024

Biogas, composed mainly of methane (CH₄) and carbon dioxide (CO₂), is a renewable gas that can serve as an alternative energy source. In this study, we developed a new microwave reformer and analyzed its reforming characteristics. We observed that higher temperatures of the microwave receptor led to increased reforming efficiency. By supplying appropriate amounts of methane and steam, we could prevent carbon generated from the thermal decomposition reaction of carbon dioxide from depositing on the catalytic active layer, thus avoiding the inhibition of catalytic activity. Hydrogen generation was enhanced when maintaining the biogas ratio and steam supply at adequate levels. Increasing the SiC ratio in the receptor improved the uniformity of temperature distribution and growth rate, resulting in higher conversion rates of the reforming process.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.1015-1020
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• 2012

Resistance of the front electrode is the highest proportion of the ingredients of the series resistance in crystalline silicon solar cell. While resistance of the front electrode is decreased with larger area, it induces the optical loss, causing the conversion efficiency drop. Therefore the front electrode with high aspect ratio increasing its height and decreasing is necessary for high-efficiency solar cell in considering shadowing loss and resistance of front electrode. In this paper, we used the screen printing method to form high aspect ratio electrode by multiple printing. Screen printing is the straightforward technology to establish the electrodes in silicon solar cell fabrication. The several printed front electrodes with Ag paste on silicon wafer showed the significantly increased height and slightly widen finger. As a result, the resistance of the front electrode was decreased with multiple printing even if it slightly increased the shadowing loss. We showed the improved electrical characteristics for c-Si solar cell with repeatedly printed front electrode by 0.5%. It lays a foundation for high efficiency solar cell with high aspect ratio electrode using screen printing.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.15 no.2 s.70
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• pp.3-9
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• 2006

As a basic study on the conversion of molten converter slag to the ordinary portland cement, the effects of $Al_{2}O_{3}$ addition on the interface reaction between solid CaO and molten converter slag has been studied. Alumina added converter slag whose basicity was controlled to 1 and 2 was melted and hold for 30 minutes in MgO crucible at $1500^{\circ}C$. Then sintered CaO pellet heated at the same temperature was dipped into the molten slag and held for 30minutes. After the reaction, the crucible was cooled in air and the specimen was cut off to the horizontal direction of the crucible. The dissolution rate of CaO pellet with the addition of $Al_{2}O_{3}$ was measured by the change of the radius or sintered CaO pellet and the interface layer was observed by SEM/EDX. As a result. At the basicity 2 slag, thickness of created $C_{3}S$ layer increased 3.5 times and quantity of $C_{6}AF_{2}\;or\;C_{4}AF$ phase increase 2 times than baisicy 1 slag.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.47-53
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• 2004

As a basic study of the re-using molten converter slag as an ordinary portland cement by conversion process, molten slag and sintered CaO pellet was reacted each other. The dissolution rate of the sintered CaO pellet into the molten slag was measured and the changes of the reaction layer was also investigated. The converter slag reagent-grade $SiO_2$ added was melted and hold for 30 minutes in MgO crucible between $1350∼1500 ^{\circ}C$. Then sintered CaO pellet heated at the same temperature was dipped into the molten slag and hold for 10∼30 min. After the reaction, the crucible was cooled in air and the specimen was cut off to the horizontal direction of the crucible. The dissolution rate of CaO pellet was measured by the change of the radius of sintered CaO pellet and the interface layer was observed by SEM/EDX and XRD. The dissolution rate of sintered CaO pellet contacted with the slag of basicity 1 was 9.8 $\mu\textrm{m}$/min at $1350^{\circ}C$ and increased to 18.0 $\mu\textrm{m}$/min at $1500^{\circ}C$. The rate was slightly decreased to 7.6 $\mu\textrm{m}$/min at $1350^{\circ}C$ and 15.0 $\mu\textrm{m}$/min at $V^{\circ}C$ in the slag of basicity 2. The dissolution rate of CaO in converter slag was followed to the rule of Arrhenius' temperature dependency, and the apparent activation energy of the dissolution of CaO was 36 kcal/mole. In case of the slag basicity of 1, the thickness of $C_2$S layer was 64-118 $\mu\textrm{m}$ and the thickness of $C_3$S was 28∼90 $\mu\textrm{m}$ for 10∼30 minutes at $1500^{\circ}C$. And the thickness of the $C_3$S layer was 90∼120 $\mu\textrm{m}$ at the same conditions in the slag basicity of 2.