Optimization of Effective Doping Concentration of Emitter for Ideal c-Si Solar Cell Device with PC1D Simulation

Maruthamuthu Subramanian,Balaji Nagarajan,Alex Stojcevski,Varsha Subhash Betageri,Vasudeva Reddy Minnam Reddy,Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian,Gokul Sidarth Thirunavukkarasu,Saad Mekhilef,Aishwarya Ravichandran,Elmira Jamei

doi:10.3390/cryst12020244

Abstract

Increasing silicon solar cell efficiency plays a vital role in improving the dominant market share of photo-voltaic systems in the renewable energy sector. The performance of the solar cells can be evaluated by making a profound analysis on various effective parameters, such as the sheet resistance, doping concentration, thickness of the solar cell, arbitrary dopant profile, etc., using software simulation tools, such as PC1D. In this paper, we present the observations obtained from the evaluation carried out on the impact of sheet resistance on the solar cell’s parameters using PC1D software. After which, the EDNA2 simulation tool was used to analyse the emitter saturation current density for the chosen arbitrary dopant profile. Results indicated that the diffusion profile with low surface concentration and shallow junction depth can improve the blue response at the frontal side of the solar cell. The emitter saturation current density decreases from 66.52 to 36.82 fA/cm2 for the subsequent increase in sheet resistance. The blue response also increased from 89.6% to 97.5% with rise in sheet resistance. In addition, the short circuit density and open circuit voltage was also observed to be improved by 0.6 mA/cm2 and 3 mV for the sheet resistance value of 130 Ω/sq, which resulted in achieving the highest efficiency of 20.6%.

Highlights

The energy demand and rate of electricity consumption has significantly increased with urbanization, technological advancements and population growth [1,2], which is primarily addressed by fossil-fuel-based conventional energy resources
The results show that the emitter saturation current density decreased from 66.52 to 36.82 fA/cm2 with an increase in the sheet resistance during n+(phosphorus) diffusion
The internal quantum efficiency increased from 89.6% to 97.5% for the corresponding surge in sheet resistance

Summary

Introduction

The energy demand and rate of electricity consumption has significantly increased with urbanization, technological advancements and population growth [1,2], which is primarily addressed by fossil-fuel-based conventional energy resources. The use of conventional energy resources leads to global warming and climate change creating adverse environmental impacts. To reduce these impacts, renewable energy resources, such as solar, wind, tidal, biomass, hydro, and geothermal, are considered as an alternative energy generation sources. Solar photovoltaics are considered as a promising type of renewable energy resource due to the abundant availability and cost-effective nature leading to a production of about 200 to 350 W/m2 in hot temperate climatic regions on average. Matthias et al projected an installation capacity of about 800,000 km of solar panels to meet the gross estimated demand of 16 TW highlighting the drawback of the very low (10%) conversion efficiency of the commercially available solar panels [4]

Objectives

Results

Conclusion