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Analysis of industrial c‐Si solar cell's front metallization by advanced numerical simulation
Author(s) -
Yang Yang,
Altermatt Pietro P.,
Zhu Weihua,
Liang Xueqin,
Shen Hui
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
progress in photovoltaics: research and applications
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.286
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1099-159X
pISSN - 1062-7995
DOI - 10.1002/pip.1148
Subject(s) - common emitter , plating (geology) , busbar , materials science , semiconductor , front (military) , optoelectronics , solar cell , electrical resistivity and conductivity , engineering physics , electrical engineering , mechanical engineering , engineering , physics , geophysics
The influence of the front metallization on the performance of industrially fabricated c‐Si solar cells is quantified by means of a combination of optical, semiconductor, and circuit modeling. Special attention is given to the front metallization of conventionally processed emitters. First, we verify our model by reproducing the measured I–V curves of industrially fabricated cells. Based on this, the potential changes in performance are predicted by variations in finger spacing, finger resistivity, busbar numbers, and contact resistivity. We also assess the benefits derived from the higher aspect ratios of the fingers: if the fingers are 120 (or 60 µm) wide, increasing the finger height from 15 to 25 µm increases their efficiency by 0.06% (or 0.7%) absolute if a conventional emitter is used. This implies that, if the fingers cannot be made as narrow as 60 µm in industrial mass production, the economic gains from higher aspect ratios may be rather limited, because there is a trade‐off between improved cell efficiency and the increasing cost of silver. Simulations show that, for the light‐induced plating approach, the seed layer must be made as narrow as 50 µm in order to achieve an efficiency gain of 1% absolute with a plating of 10 µm silver. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.