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Wafer thickness optimization for silicon solar cells of heterogeneous material quality
Author(s) -
Michl Bernhard,
Kasemann Martin,
Warta Wilhelm,
Schubert Martin C.
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.201308090
Subject(s) - wafer , recombination , silicon , materials science , limiting , trapping , solar cell , optoelectronics , chemistry , mechanical engineering , ecology , biochemistry , biology , engineering , gene
In this Letter, we introduce a method of calculating the optimal wafer thickness for silicon solar cells with multicrystalline bulk material. The optimal thickness depends on the relation of bulk recombination to surface recombination and the light trapping. For multicrystalline silicon bulk recombination strongly varies laterally and with injection level, which complicates the calculations. A thickness optimization using the “Efficiency Limiting Bulk Recombination Analysis” (ELBA) takes all these effects correctly into account. (© 2013 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)