P‐type Upgraded Metallurgical‐Grade Multicrystalline Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells with Open‐Circuit Voltages over 690 mV

Stefani, Bruno Vicari; Weigand, William A.; Wright, Matthew; Soeriyadi, Anastasia; Yu, Zhengshan J.; Kim, Moonyong; Chen, Daniel; Holman, Zachary C.; Hallam, Brett

doi:10.1002/pssa.201900319

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 47 publications

(83 reference statements)

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“…Because SHJ cells do not undergo this process, high-quality n-type Cz wafers are required for achieving high-efficiency SHJ cells. This argument was used in a recent review [25] to draw attention to defect engineering in SHJ cells to facilitate the use of lower-quality silicon wafers such as those made from low-lifetime SoG silicon [31], upgraded metallurgical-grade (UMG) silicon [32], and high-performance multicrystalline wafers [33]. Particularly in [31], it was shown how gettering plus hydrogenation can result in an increase of more than 70 mV for SHJ cells fabricated from low-lifetime SoG p-type Cz wafers.…”

Section: Pv Solar Industry and Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon Solar Cells: Trends, Manufacturing Challenges, and AI Perspectives

Di Sabatino,

Hendawi,

Garcia

2024

Crystals

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Photovoltaic (PV) installations have experienced significant growth in the past 20 years. During this period, the solar industry has witnessed technological advances, cost reductions, and increased awareness of renewable energy’s benefits. As more than 90% of the commercial solar cells in the market are made from silicon, in this work we will focus on silicon-based solar cells. As PV research is a very dynamic field, we believe that there is a need to present an overview of the status of silicon solar cell manufacturing (from feedstock production to ingot processing to solar cell fabrication), including recycling and the use of artificial intelligence. Therefore, this work introduces the silicon solar cell value chain with cost and sustainability aspects. It provides an overview of the main manufacturing techniques for silicon ingots, specifically Czochralski and directional solidification, with a focus on highlighting their key characteristics. We discuss the major challenges in silicon ingot production for solar applications, particularly optimizing production yield, reducing costs, and improving efficiency to meet the continued high demand for solar cells. We review solar cell technology developments in recent years and the new trends. We briefly discuss the recycling aspects, and finally, we present how digitalization and artificial intelligence can aid in solving some of the current PV industry challenges.

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Section: Pv Solar Industry and Trendsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Silicon Solar Cells: Trends, Manufacturing Challenges, and AI Perspectives

Di Sabatino,

Hendawi,

Garcia

2024

Crystals

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“…Vicari Stefani et al presented a study on defect engineering in p‐type UMG mc‐Si wafers from the edge of the silicon cast. [ 48 ] These wafers, referred to as “red zone” wafers, contain severe impurity contamination at the edges due to impurities that diffuse from the crucible wall during crystallization. Defect engineering approaches led to significant increases in the effective lifetime, which increased from 9 μs for the control to 39 μs in the G + H group.…”

Section: Defect Engineering Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress with Defect Engineering in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Wright

Stefani

Soeriyadi

et al. 2021

Physica Rapid Research Ltrs

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Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells are formed by the deposition of stacks of intrinsic and doped hydrogenated amorphous silicon layers (a-Si:H) on the surface of crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers. [1][2][3] The doped a-Si:H layers determine the carrier selectivity of each contact, which defines the direction of current flow, and the intrinsic a-Si:H layers, which are deposited directly onto the crystalline silicon (c-Si) surface, provide excellent surface passivation. [4,5] The cells are completed by the deposition of a transparent conducting oxide (TCO) to aid lateral conduction and the formation of metal contacts, typically by screen printing of silver. [6][7][8] This technology was pioneered in the 1990s by Japanese company Sanyo. [9][10][11] The solar photovoltaics (PV) market is currently dominated by the passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC) design. [12,13] Compared to PERC, SHJ solar cells have multiple advantages. They have demonstrated higher open circuit voltages (V OC ), with V OC values as high as 750 mV. [9] The high V OC is related to the excellent surface passivation provided by the a-Si:H layers. The world record 1 sun efficiency of 26.7% for a single-junction silicon solar cell was achieved using this approach, [14] and cells with efficiency exceeding 25% have been fabricated in an industrial environment. [15] Another advantage of SHJ cells, which is linked to the high V OC , is the lower temperature coefficient, meaning that power losses in SHJ cells operated at elevated temperatures are lower than in other siliconbased technologies. [2,16] Therefore, under realistic cell-operation conditions in the field, the actual power output of an SHJ module will be higher than that of a PERC module, even if they have the same power rating at room temperature. In addition, the expected rise of tandem solar cells with silicon as the bottom cell has also increased interest in the SHJ technology, as it is well suited as the bottom cell in a tandem device. [17][18][19][20][21][22] These advantages mean that industry is seriously looking into SHJ solar cells as a technology to compete with PERC in the future. The ITRPV 11th edition indicates that the market share for SHJ cells is expected to increase to 15% over the next ten years [23] which will represent a significant volume as we move toward terawatt-scale photovoltaics. [24] One unique aspect of SHJ cells is that all processing occurs in a low-temperature regime, typically <250 C. [4,16,25] This is very different to most other cell architectures, such as aluminium

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“…and structural defects, such as grain boundaries, dislocations, second-phase precipitates, oxidation-induced stacking faults (OISF), etc. [11][12][13] All of them strongly affect the minority carrier lifetime and hence the solar cell efficiency. Fe is especially problematic because the element has high solubility and diffusivity at thermal treatments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

External Gettering of Metallic Impurities by Black Silicon Layer

Ayvazyan

Hakhoyan

Ayvazyan

et al. 2023

Physica Status Solidi (a)

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Black silicon (b‐Si) has many attractive properties and is currently being adopted in various fields of semiconductor technology. It is shown here that b‐Si during thermal activation may serve as an external gettering layer to remove metallic impurities and associated defects from bulk Si. The gettering efficiency by b‐Si is estimated according to the results of studying the resistivity, defect density, interstitial iron concentration, and effective minority carrier lifetime on gettered test and ungettered reference Si samples. It is shown that in the thermal oxidation process, the b‐Si layer serves as an effective drain for excess iron atoms and other fast‐diffusing impurities, thereby significantly reducing the density of oxidation‐induced stacking faults in Si. In addition, the resistivity of the substrates decreases, and the bulk carrier lifetime increases significantly. Finally, gettering by b‐Si is introduced into the solar cells fabrication process and its effect on solar cell current–voltage characteristics is investigated. It has been shown that all electronic parameters of the solar cells are improved. The conversion efficiency of ungettered solar cells is 16.8%, and for gettered solar cells, depending on the oxidation temperature, it increases by 1.36–1.96%.

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P‐type Upgraded Metallurgical‐Grade Multicrystalline Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells with Open‐Circuit Voltages over 690 mV

Cited by 9 publications

References 47 publications

Silicon Solar Cells: Trends, Manufacturing Challenges, and AI Perspectives

Silicon Solar Cells: Trends, Manufacturing Challenges, and AI Perspectives

Progress with Defect Engineering in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

External Gettering of Metallic Impurities by Black Silicon Layer

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