• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.158-161
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• 2006

Superstrate pin amorphous silicon thin-film (a-Si:H) solar cells are prepared on $SnO_2:F$ and ZnO:Al transparent conducting oxides (TCO) In order to see the effect of TCO/P-layers on a-Si:H solar cell operation. The solar cells prepared on textured ZnO:Al have higher open circuit voltage $V_{oc}$ than cells prepared on $SnO_2:F$. Presence of thin microcrystalline p-type silicon layer $({\mu}c-Si:H)$ between ZnO:Al and p a-SiC:H plays a major role by causing improvement in fill factor as well as $V_{oc}$, of a-Si:H solar cells prepared on ZnO:Al TCO. Without any treatment of pi interface, we could obtain high $V_{oc}$, of 994mv while keeping fill factor (72.7%) and short circuit current density $J_{sc}$ at the same level as for the cells on $SnO_2:F$ TCO. This high $V_{oc}$ value can be attributed to modification in the current transport in this region due to creation of a potential barrier.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.347.1-347.1
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• 2016

Screen printing is commonly used to form the electrode for crystalline silicon solar cells. However, it has caused high resistance and low aspect ratio, resulting in decrease of conversion efficiency. Accordingly, Ni/Cu/Ag plating method could be applied for crystalline silicon solar cells to reduce contact resistance. For Ni/Cu/Ag plating, laser ablation process is required to remove anti-reflection layers prior to the plating process, but laser ablation results in surface damage and then decrease of open-circuit voltage and cell efficiency. Another issue with plating process is ghost plating. Ghost plating occurred in the non-metallized region, resulting from pin-hole in anti-reflection layer. In this paper, we investigated the effect of Ni/Cu/Ag plating on the electrical properties, compared to screen printing method. In addition, phosphoric acid layer was spin-coated prior to laser ablation to minimize emitter damage by the laser. Phosphorous elements in phosphoric acid generated selective emitter throughout emitter layer during laser process. Then, KOH treatment was applied to remove surface damage by laser. At this step, amorphous silicon formed by laser ablation was recrystallized during firing process and remaining of amorphous silicon was removed by KOH treatment. As a result, electrical properties as Jsc, FF and efficiency were improved, but Voc was lower than screen printed solar cells because Voc was decreased due to surface damage by laser process. Accordingly, we expect that efficiency of solar cells could be improved by optimization of the process to remove surface damage.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.41-46
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• 2013

Efficient and inexpensive solar cells are necessary for photo-voltaic to be widely adopted for mainstream electricity generation. For this to occur, the recombination losses of charge carriers (i.e. electrons or holes) must be minimized using a surface passivation technique suitable for manufacturing. Recently it has been shown that aluminum oxide thin films are negatively charged dielectrics that provide excellent surface passivation of silicon solar cells to attract positive-charged holes. Especially aluminum oxide thin film is a quite suitable passivation on the rear side of p-type silicon solar cells. This paper, it demonstrate the interfacial microstructure and electrical properties of mono-crystalline silicon surface passivated by $Al_2O_3$ films during firing process as applied for screen-printed solar cells. The first task is a comparison of the interfacial microstructure and chemical bonds of PECVD $Al_2O_3$ and of PEALD $Al_2O_3$ films for the surface passivation of silicon. The second is to study electrical properties of double-stacked layers of PEALD $Al_2O_3$/PECVD SiN films after firing process in the temperature range of $650{\sim}950^{\circ}C$.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.109-118
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• 2018

Silicon (Si) solar cells are the most successful technology which are ruling the present photovoltaic (PV) market. In that essence, multijunction (MJ) solar cells provided a new path to improve the state-of-art efficiencies. There are so many hurdles to grow the MJ III-V materials on Si substrate as Si with other materials often demands similar qualities, so it is needed to realize the prospective of Si tandem solar cells. However, Si tandem solar cells with MJ III-V materials have shown the maximum efficiency of 30 %. This work reviews the development of the III-V/Si solar cells with the synopsis of various growth mechanisms i.e hetero-epitaxy, wafer bonding and mechanical stacking of III-V materials on Si substrate. Theoretical approaches to design efficient tandem cell with an analysis of state-of-art silicon solar cells, sensitivity, difficulties and their probable solutions are discussed in this work. An analytical model which yields the practical efficiency values to design the high efficiency III-V/Si solar cells is described briefly.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2007.02a
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• pp.44-44
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• 2007

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.17-20
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• 2003

This paper describes the effect of halogenic gettering during oxide passivation of commercial solar cell with the $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure. In order to study the effect of halogenic gettering on $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure mono-crystalline silicon solar cell, we performed conventional POCl$_3$ diffusion for emitter formation and oxide passivation in the presence of HCl vapors. The $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure based silicon solar cells were found to have higher short circuit current and minority carrier lifetime. Their performance was also found to be superior than the conventional $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure based mono-crystalline silicon solar cell. The cell parameters of the $n^{+}$-p-$p^{+}$ and $n^{+}$-p-$n^{+}$ structure based cells, passivated by HCl assisted oxidation were measured. The improvement in $I_{sc}$ was attributed to the effect of the increased diffusion length of minority carriers, which came from the halogenic gettering effect during the growth of passivating oxide. The presence of chlorine caused gettering of the cells by removing the heavy metals, if any. The other advantage of the presence of chlorine was the removal of the diffusion induced (in oxygen environment) stacking faults and line defects from the surfaces of the silicon wafers. All these effects caused the improvement of the minority carrier lifetime, which in-turn helped to improve the quality of the solar cells.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.649-653
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• 2010

In this paper, double texturization of multi crystalline silicon solar cells was studied with laser and reactive ion etching (RIE). In the case of multi crystalline silicon wafers, chemical etching has problems in producing a uniform surface texture. Thus various etching methods such as laser and dry texturization have been studied for multi crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, laser texturization with an Nd:$YVO_4$ green laser was performed first to get the proper hole spacing and $300{\mu}m$ was found to be the most proper value. Laser texturization on crystalline silicon wafers was followed by damage removal in acid solution and RIE to achieve double texturization. This study showed that double texturization on multi crystalline silicon wafers with laser firing and RIE resulted in lower reflectance, higher quantum yield and better efficiency than that process without RIE. However, RIE formed sharp structures on the silicon wafer surfaces, which resulted in 0.8% decrease of fill factor at solar cell characterization. While chemical etching makes it difficult to obtain a uniform surface texture for multi crystalline silicon solar cells, the process of double texturization with laser and RIE yields a uniform surface structure, diminished reflectance, and improved efficiency. This finding lays the foundation for the study of low-cost, high efficiency multi crystalline silicon solar cells.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.102-108
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• 2005

We have developed highly stabilized (p-i-n)-type protocrystalline silicon (pc-Si:H) multilayer solar cells. To achieve a high conversion efficiency, we applied a double-layer p-type amorphous silicon-carbon alloy $(p-a-Si_{1-x}C_x:H)$ structure to the pc-Si:H multilayer solar cells. The less pronounced initial short wavelength quantum efficiency variation as a function of bias voltage proves that the double $(p-a-Si_{1-x}C_x:H)$ layer structure successfully reduces recombination at the p/i interface. It was found that a natural hydrogen treatment involving an etch of the defective undiluted p-a-SiC:H window layer before the hydrogen-diluted p-a-SiC:H buffer layer deposition and an improvement of the order in the window layer. Thus, we achieved a highly stabilized efficiency of $9.0\%$ without any back reflector.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.65-69
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• 2017

This paper presents a Technology-CAD (TCAD) simulation of the characteristics of crystalline Si pillar array solar cells. The junction depth and the surface concentration of the solar cells were optimized to obtain the targeted sheet resistance of the emitter region. The diffusion model was determined by calibrating the emitter doping profile of the microscale silicon pillars. The dimension parameters determining the pillar shape, such as width, height, and spacing were varied within a simulation window from ${\sim}2{\mu}m$ to $5{\mu}m$. The simulation showed that increasing pillar width (or diameter) and spacing resulted in the decrease of current density due to surface area loss, light trapping loss, and high reflectance. Although increasing pillar height might improve the chances of light trapping, the recombination loss due to the increase in the carrier's transfer length canceled out the positive effect to the photo-generation component of the current. The silicon pillars were experimentally formed by photoresist patterning and electroless etching. The laboratory results of a fabricated Si pillar solar cell showed the efficiency and the fill factor to be close to the simulation results.

• Journal of Ceramic Processing Research
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• v.13 no.spc2
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• pp.336-340
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• 2012

Wide band gap p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiO:H) buffer layer has been used at the interface of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) and hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) p-type layer of a p-i-n type a-Si:H solar cell. Introduction of 5 nm thick buffer layer improves in blue response of the cell along with 0.5% enhancement of photovoltaic conversion efficiency (η). The cells with buffer layer show higher open circuit voltage (Voc), fill factor (FF), short circuit current density (Jsc) and improved blue response with respect to the cell without buffer layer.