Performance Analysis of a Single Junction Crystalline Solar Cell using 1D Drift Diffusion Modelling

Abstract

This paper discusses different parameters and their effects on the efficiency of a crystalline solar cell. This is done using a 1D Drift Diffusion model for silicon solar cells by varying several parameters like the n-layer and p-layer thickness, electron and hole doping concentration, the electron and hole maximum SRH lifetime, and electron-hole saturation velocity. A various permutation of the values of these parameters was used to study various characteristics of the solar cell and calculate the maximum efficiency. It investigated various output characteristics to understand the correlation between these input parameters and the efficiency of solar cells. Simulating graphs such as current and power vs voltage, band diagrams helped us in getting optimum input parameters to achieve maximum efficiency. The paper presents, as motivation for this work, a number of parameters that can be used to increase the efficiency of a solar cell, which is a fundamental unit of a solar panel, which in turn can be a stepping stone to move towards a cleaner energy source. The efficiency of the solar cell peaked when the n-layer and p-layer thickness took <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$3\ \mu \mathrm{m}$</tex> and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$55\ \mu \mathrm{m}$</tex> values respectively, while the ideal SRH lifetime for a crystalline silicon solar cell was measured to be 10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">−2</sup> s. The efficiency achieved for the same was 24.61%. This paper further explores and understands the reasons for these optimums and how and by how much they improve the efficiency of the solar cell.