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Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon Based Solar Cells: Optimization Formalism and Numerical Algorithm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2011

Anatoli Shkrebtii ,
Yuriy Kryuchenko ,
Anaroliy Sachenko ,
Igor Sokolovskyi  and
Franco Gaspari
Anatoli Shkrebtii
Affiliation:
Anatoli.Chkrebtii@uoit.ca, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Faculty of Science, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, L1H 7K4, Canada, (905) 721-8668 ext. 2558, (905) 721-3304
Yuriy Kryuchenko
Affiliation:
kryuchenko@isp.kiev.ua, Institute of Semiconductor Physics, Kiev, Ukraine
Anaroliy Sachenko
Affiliation:
sach@isp.kiev.ua, Institute of Semiconductor Physics, Kiev, Ukraine
Igor Sokolovskyi
Affiliation:
falcon13@inbox.ru, Institute of Semiconductor Physics, Kiev, Ukraine
Franco Gaspari
Affiliation:
franco.gaspari@uoit.ca, UOIT, Science, Oshawa, Canada
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Abstract

Thin film hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) is widely used in photovoltaics. In order to get the best possible performance of the a-Si:H solar cells it is important to optimize the amorphous film and solar cells in terms their parameters such as mobility gap, p-, i- and n-layer doping levels, electron and hole lifetime and their mobilities, resistance of p-, i- and n-layers, contact grid geometry and parameters of the transparent conducting and antireflecting layers, and others. To maximize thin a-Si:H film based solar cell performance we have developed a general numerical formalism of photoconversion, which takes into account all the above parameters for the optimization. Application of the formalism is demonstrated for typical a-Si:H based solar cells before Staebler-Wronski (SW) light soaking effect. This general formalism is not limited to a-Si:H based systems only, and it can be applied to other types of solar cells as well.

Keywords

photovoltaicamorphoussimulation

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