Abstract
A hybrid tandem solar cell consisting of a thin-film, nanocrystalline silicon top junction and a silicon heterojunction bottom junction is proposed as a supporting solar cell for photoelectrochemical applications. Tunneling recombination junction engineering is shown to be an important consideration in designing this type of solar cell. The best hybrid cell produced has a spectral utilization of 30.6mAcm−2 a JSC of 14mAcm−2, a VOC of 1.1V, a fill factor of 0.67 and thus an efficiency of 10.3%. A high solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 7.9% can be predicted when using the hybrid cell in conjunction with current a-SiC photocathode technology.
Highlights
As well as a gradient doped boron-doped amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC):H (p) layer and a phosphorous doped nanocrystalline silicon oxide layer
The photocathode stack consisted of a 10 nm p-doped a-SiC:H(B) layer, a 40 nm gradient p-doped a-SiC:H(B) layer, a 100 nm intrinsic a-SiC:H layer, a 10 nm nanocrystalline silicon oxide (nc-SiOx) layer with a 25 nm TiO2 layer coated with a 1 nm platinum catalyst
Producing a hybrid cell that can produce higher currents at around 0.8–1.0 V is favorable taking into account these future enhancements
Summary
As well as a gradient doped boron-doped a-SiC:H (p) layer and a phosphorous doped nanocrystalline silicon oxide (nc-SiOx) layer. A challenge to achieving a high STH efficiency is that the low photovoltage of photocathodes (0.8 V in the case of a-SiC:H technology) is not enough to overcome the thermodynamic watersplitting potential of 1.23 V [9] In addition to this 1.23 V the overpotentials necessary to drive the overall redox reactions need to be considered [10]. An alternative PV structure is proposed for the a-SiC:H photocathode to realize a silicon based and bias free prototype with a high STH efficiency. This PV component consists of a thin-film, nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) top cell and a silicon heterojunction (SHJ) bottom cell.
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