Abstract
We numerically investigate the effects of an incoherent front cover glass on the current–voltage (J–V) characteristics of a Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) solar cell using an integrated optoelectronic model. A 3-mm cover glass—the thickness of which was larger than the coherence length of sunlight—was incoherently modeled based on the equispaced thickness averaging method, where coherent simulation results of the wave equation were averaged over a set of equispaced phase thicknesses. The changes in optical power dissipation, absorptivity and electron–hole pair generation rate were calculated depending on the variation of the equispaced phase thickness. The calculation results of the J–V curves were obtained through numerical solutions of the coupled Poisson and continuity equations. By comparing the J–V curves calculated between coherently and incoherently modeled cover glass, we obtained a maximum ±0.54% deviation of the short-circuit current density. This demonstrates that the front cover glass should be modeled as optically incoherent to improve the calculation accuracy of the electrical J–V curves as well as the optical absorption characteristics in the optoelectronic modeling of CIGS solar cells.
Highlights
Thin-film solar cells based on a Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) absorption material have been intensively investigated as an auspicious alternative to traditional silicon-based solar cells owing to their low cost and high efficiency [1,2,3]
We numerically investigated the effect of the incoherent front cover glass on the J–V characteristics of a CIGS solar cell using an finite element method (FEM)-based integrated optoelectronic model
The incoherent property of the 3-mm cover glass was optically modeled as a 1-μm initial layer plus the equispaced phase layers (EPLs), the thickness of which was determined based on the equispaced thickness averaging method (ETAM)
Summary
Thin-film solar cells based on a Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) absorption material have been intensively investigated as an auspicious alternative to traditional silicon-based solar cells owing to their low cost and high efficiency [1,2,3]. Because of their high optical absorption coefficient, CIGS solar cells with a wide absorption spectrum and high stability reached a power conversion efficiency of 19.9% in. Because the coherence length of sunlight is approximately 0.6 μm [5] (preserving the phase information of the optical field), the multilayer structure of a CIGS solar cell module can be treated as mixed coherent and incoherent layers in optical modeling.
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