Analysis of the interdigitated back contact solar cells: The n-type substrate lifetime and wafer thickness

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/24/10/108801

Abstract The n-type silicon integrated-back contact (IBC) solar cell has attracted much attention due to its high efficiency, whereas its performance is very sensitive to the wafer of low quality or the contamination during high temperature fabrication processing, which leads to low bulk lifetime τ_bulk . In order to clarify the influence of bulk lifetime on cell characteristics, two-dimensional (2D) TCAD simulation, combined with our experimental data, is used to simulate the cell performances, with the wafer thickness scaled down under various τ_bulk conditions. The modeling results show that for the IBC solar cell with high τ_bulk, (such as 1 ms-2 ms), its open-circuit voltage V_oc almost remains unchanged, and the short-circuit current density J_sc monotonically decreases as the wafer thickness scales down. In comparison, for the solar cell with low τ_bulk (for instance, <500 s) wafer or the wafer contaminated during device processing, the V_oc increases monotonically but the J_sc first increases to a maximum value and then drops off as the wafer's thickness decreases. A model combing the light absorption and the minority carrier diffusion is used to explain this phenomenon. The research results show that for the wafer with thinner thickness and high bulk lifetime, the good light trapping technology must be developed to offset the decrease in J_sc.

Keywords: lifetime wafer thickness interdigitated back contact solar cells technology computer-aided design

Received: 09 January 2015
Revised: 18 March 2015
Accepted manuscript online:

PACS:

88.40.fc

(Modeling and analysis)

Fund: Project supported by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology Projects (Grant Nos. 2012AA050304 and Y0GZ124S01), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11104319, 11274346, 51202285, 51402347, and 51172268), and the Fund of the Solar Energy Action Plan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Nos. Y3ZR044001 and Y2YF014001).

Corresponding Authors: Jia Rui
E-mail: Jiarui@ime.ac.cn

Cite this article:

Zhang Wei (张巍), Chen Chen (陈晨), Jia Rui (贾锐), Sun Yun (孙昀), Xing Zhao (邢钊), Jin Zhi (金智), Liu Xin-Yu (刘新宇), Liu Xiao-Wen (刘晓文) Analysis of the interdigitated back contact solar cells: The n-type substrate lifetime and wafer thickness 2015 Chin. Phys. B 24 108801

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Analysis of the interdigitated back contact solar cells: The n-type substrate lifetime and wafer thickness

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