2014•Progress in Photovoltaics Research and ApplicationsRequires access
High efficiency triple junction thin film silicon solar cells with optimized electrical structure
Bofei Liu, Lisha Bai, Ze Chen, Xiaodan Zhang, Dekun Zhang, Jian Ni, Qian Huang, Changchun Wei, Jian Colin Sun, Xinliang Chen, Huizhi Ren, Guofu Hou, Guangcai Wang, Ying Na Zhao
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Abstract
Abstract We report on improving the performance of pin‐type a‐Si:H/a‐SiGe:H/µc‐Si:H triple‐junction solar cells and corresponding single‐junction solar cells in this paper. Based on wet‐etching sputtered aluminum‐doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Al) substrates with optimized surface morphologies and photo‐electrical material properties, after adjusting individual single‐junction solar cells utilized in triple‐junction solar cells with various optimization techniques, we pay close attention to the optimization of tunnel recombination junctions (TRJs). By means of the optimization of individual a‐Si:H/a‐SiGe:H and a‐SiGe:H/µc‐Si:H double‐junction solar cells, we compensated for the open circuit voltage (Voc) loss at the a‐Si:H/a‐SiGe:H TRJ by adopting a p‐type µc‐Si:H layer with a low activation energy. By combining the optimized single‐junction solar cells and top/middle, middle/bottom TRJs with little electrical losses, an initial efficiency of 15.06% was achieved for pin‐type a‐Si:H/a‐SiGe:H/µc‐Si:H triple‐junction solar cells. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.