Performance Investigation of a Proposed Flipped npn Microstructure Silicon Solar Cell Using TCAD Simulation

Abstract

This work aims at inspecting the device operation and performance of a novel flipped npn microstructure solar cell based on low-cost heavily doped silicon wafers. The flipped structure was designed to eliminate the shadowing effect as applied in the conventional silicon-based interdigitated back-contact cell (IBC). Due to the disappearance of the shadowing impact, the optical performance and short-circuit current density of the structure have been improved. Accordingly, the cell power conversion efficiency (PCE) has been improved in comparison to the conventional npn solar cell microstructure. A detailed analysis of the flipped npn structure was carried out in which we performed TCAD simulations for the electrical and optical performance of the flipped cell. Additionally, a comparison between the presented flipped microstructure and the conventional npn solar cell was accomplished. The PCE of the conventional npn structure was found to be 14.5%, while it was about 15% for the flipped structure when using the same cell physical parameters. Furthermore, the surface recombination velocity and base bulk lifetime, which are the most important recombination parameters, were studied to investigate their influence on the flipped microstructure performance. An efficiency of up to 16% could be reached when some design parameters were properly fine-tuned. Moreover, the impact of the different physical models on the performance of the proposed cell was studied, and it was revealed that band gap narrowing effect was the most significant factor limiting the open-circuit voltage. All the simulations accomplished in this analysis were carried out using the SILVACO TCAD process and device simulators.