Design and Simulation of Highly Efficient One-Sided Short PIN Diode Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cell

Abstract

Performance of highly efficient one-sided short PIN diode heterojunction solar cell model is studied using AFORS-HET simulation software. Here, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">p</i> -type crystalline silicon is used as an absorber layer, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">n</i> -type amorphous silicon as emitter layer, and a thin intrinsic amorphous silicon (i-a-Si:H) layer is sandwiched in between, which acts as a passivation layer. The diode model concept has been introduced mainly to lower the reverse saturation current by appropriate selection of the cell parameters. Short diode reduces recombination phenomenon in the short quasi-neutral region (n-a-Si:H in this article), and one-sided junction allows the maximum amount of light absorption in the absorber layer (p-c-Si in this article). The one-sided junction nature has been confirmed by capacitance–voltage ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">C–V</i> ) analysis. Further thickness variation of layers and role of the carrier concentration of n-a-Si layer on various parameters, such as short-circuit current density ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">J</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">sc</sub> ), open-circuit voltage ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">V</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">oc</sub> ), and fill factor (FF) have also been studied. The structure has exhibited an open circuit voltage of 0.714 V, fill factor 0.80, and maximum efficiency of 24.2%. Further, experimental validation is also established by comparing the theoretical results with the fabricated NIP structure.