Abstract
Silicon Germanium (SiGe) solar cells with different bandgaps are used in the fabrication of the crystalline-Si/SiGe (c-Si/SiGe) double-junction cell in order to enhance the performance of the c-Si single devices. The new device is simulated with SCAPS-1D by placing the c-Si junction on the top of the SiGe solar cell. Through this simulation, one can assess the performance of the c-Si/SiGe double-junction device. The upper c-Si cell achieved an efficiency of 16.66% with 40.5 μm total thickness, while the lower cell SiGe achieved ~ 19% efficiency. By analyzing the current matching between both cells at different bandgaps for SiGe cell (1.097 eV, 1.016 eV, and 0.928 eV), a mismatch is found. But, when applying 0.882 eV bandgap for the lower cell with absorber thicknesses of 110, 100, 90, and 6.2 μm, a matching is obtained between the two junctions. The efficiency of the designed cell is found ~ 24.7%, with a maximum current density of 30.25 mA/cm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , achieved at an open circuit voltage of 1.01 V and a total thickness of 57.2 μm. These results indicate that the double-junction device significantly exceeds the device performance by 7.6% with equal thickness of the optimized single-junction c-Si solar cell.
Highlights
The solar energy industry of crystalline silicon has more than 90% global marketing compared to other solar cells [1]–[3]
We demonstrate a performance analysis of c-Si/Silicon Germanium (SiGe) double junction solar cells with an upper cell c-Si (Eg = 1.12 eV) and a lower cell SiGe with varying bandgap (Eg = 1.097 eV, 1.016 eV, 0.928 eV and 0.882 eV) using the SCAPS-1D simulator [35]
Using SCAPS-1D software, a comprehensive analysis of c-Si/SiGe tandem solar cell has been provided in this work
Summary
The solar energy industry of crystalline silicon has more than 90% global marketing compared to other solar cells [1]–[3]. The current global standard efficiency of silicon solar cells is limited to the range from 25% to 26.7% [5]. To increase the efficiency of the single-junction crystalline silicon cell with a single bandgap, some studies were made in the last several years on monocrystalline silicon solar cells fabricated by different techniques with thickness around 30 μm. Bozzola et al [6] studied the effect of c-Si solar cell thickness variation in the range 10-80 μm to produce efficiency 15-19%. M. Hilali et al fabricated a 25 μm c-Si solar cell using exfoliation technique to improve the optical absorption [7]. A 30 μm thick c-Si solar cell is theoretically optimized using a double back reflector layer to enhance the
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