Numerical simulation of the impurity photovoltaic effect in silicon solar cells

Abstract

Recently, the impurity photovoltaic effect (IPV) was proposed to improve the solar cell performance. Free electron–hole pairs can be generated in a two-step process involving an impurity level in the energy gap and two lower-energy photons: first electrons are optically excited from the valence band to the defect level and then from the defect level to the conduction band. The IPV effect will thus enhance the long-wavelength response of the cell. A significant amount of theoretical work has been carried out on IPV effect in the literature, particularly on silicon solar cells with indium impurities as defect. However, the lack of an easily available solar cell simulator including the IPV effect is a handicap. In this work, the numerical solar cell simulator SCAPS of the ELIS group was extended to include IPV in collaboration between the ELIS and the LPDS groups. Also, some special features are implemented, such as the calculation of electron and hole photoemission cross-sections of the impurity using the model of Lucovsky. The functionality of new SCAPS version was checked against existing results in the literature. Also, new results are presented such as the evolution of solar cell parameters with the indium density. We find that increasing indium concentration can improve silicon solar cell parameters, especially the short-circuit current and the efficiency, without drastically decreasing the open-circuit voltage. This is possible if a suitable structure for the cell is chosen. The optimum indium density should be equal around the base region density to obtain a positive benefit from the IPV effect. Light trapping, which is related to the internal reflectance at the front and the back of the cell, is very important in the IPV study. Reflectivity at the front and the back should exceed 99.9% to obtain a real efficiency increase. We calculate an improvement of about 6 mA/cm 2 in the photocurrent, and about 2% for the efficiency, which is due to the enhancement of long-wavelength absorption by the IPV effect.