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Performance Comparison Between Polycrystalline Thin‐film and Single‐crystal Solar Cells
Author(s) -
Sites James R.,
Liu Xiaoxiang
Publication year - 1995
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.4670030505
Subject(s) - materials science , optoelectronics , cadmium telluride photovoltaics , thin film , crystallite , band gap , absorption (acoustics) , layer (electronics) , thin film solar cell , reflection (computer programming) , optics , crystal (programming language) , solar cell , nanotechnology , composite material , physics , computer science , metallurgy , programming language
Recent progress has increased the efficiency of poly crystalline thin‐film solar cells to roughly two‐thirds that of single‐crystal cells of comparable bandgap. The largest remaining difference is the excessive forward recombination current, which is larger by a factor of 20 for the best CuInSe 2 ‐based cells, and by more than a factor of 100 for CdTe cells. Collection loss, related to diffusion length, is nearly as important for the CuInSe 2 ‐based cells. It is an open question how much additional reduction in these two tosses should he anticipated. However, other losses in thin‐film cells due to window‐layer absorption, reflection and grid coverage will almost certainly be reduced, so that efficiencies equal to 80% of crystalline counterparts should be a viable 5‐year target.