Recent Progress in Up-Scaling of Amorphous and Micromorph Thin Film Silicon Solar Cells to 1.4 m2 Modules

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper an overview of our developments towards industrialization of thin film silicon PV modules is presented. Amorphous silicon p-i-n solar cells have been developed in medium size single-chamber R&D KAI-M PECVD reactors. High initial efficiencies of 10.6 % and stabilized of 8.6 % could be achieved for a 1 cm2 a-Si:H p-i-n solar cell of 0.20 m thick i-layer deposited on TCO from Asahi U type (SnO2). On our in-house developed LPCVD ZnO we could further improve the stabilized a-Si:H p-i-n efficiency to a similar level of 8.5 %. Incorporating such cells in commercial available front TCO of lower quality still leads to high initial mini-module aperture efficiencies (10 × 10 cm2) of 9.1% and stabilized ones of 7.46% (independently measured by ESTI JRC-Ispra).Transferring the processes from the KAI-M to the industrial size 1.1×1.25 m2 KAI-1200 R&D reactors resulted in a-Si:H modules of 110.6 W using commercial TCO, respectively 112.4 W when applying in-house developed LPCVD front ZnO. Both initial module performances have been independently measured by ESTI laboratories of JRC Ispra. A typical temperature coefficient for the module power of -0.22 %/°C (relative loss) has been deduced from temperature dependent I-V characteristics at ESTI laboratories of JRC Ispra. Finally, micromorph mini-modules of 10 % initial aperture efficiency have been fabricated.