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Free energy loss analysis of heterojunction solar cells
Author(s) -
Brinkmann Nils,
Micard Gabriel,
Schiele Yvonne,
Hahn Giso,
Terheiden Barbara
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
physica status solidi (rrl) – rapid research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.786
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1862-6270
pISSN - 1862-6254
DOI - 10.1002/pssr.201307080
Subject(s) - physics , solar cell , heterojunction , usable , energy conversion efficiency , silicon , condensed matter physics , optoelectronics , computer science , world wide web
For the first time we present a free energy loss analysis (FELA) of heterojunction silicon solar cells (HSSC) to study the influence of the intrinsic buffer layer thickness ( t buffer ) on the solar cell efficiency ( η ). The main advantage of the FELA is that the impact of various loss mechanisms can be directly expressed in absolute percentage of η . Furthermore, it is possible to extract the magnitude of every loss for each region of the solar cell. All quantities required to perform the FELA are obtained by the simulation software AFORS‐HET. The FELA yields an optimum efficiency of 21.24% for t buffer ≈ 5 nm. The efficiency drop for t buffer £ 5 nm is ascribed to a lower maximum usable generated power Φ G (22.84% @ 2 nm, 23.98% @ 5 nm). Lower efficiencies for t buffer ³ 5 nm are attributed to the increased transport loss of holes in the intrinsic buffer layer (0.05% @ 2 nm, 0.65% 8 nm). The η values yielded by the FELA are in agreement with the ones calculated by AFORS‐HET, demonstrating the applicability of the FELA to the HSSC concept. Therewith, we demonstrate that the FELA can be employed to obtain a deeper understanding of the HSSC concept. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)