High-Performance, Tandem-Type Amorphous Silicon Solar Cell
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0989-A18-08
High-Performance, Tandem-Type Amorphous Silicon Solar Cell Porponth Sichanugrist, Nirut Pingate, and Channarong Piromjit National Science and Technology Development Agency, 111 Paholyothin Rd., Klong Luang, Pathumthani, 12120, Thailand ABSTRACT Microcrystalline silicon oxide (µc-SiO) deposited by VHF plasma from the gas mixture of silane and carbondioxide was reported by authors to be the promising material for thin-film silicon solar cell fabricated on glass substrate, comparing with the conventional amorphous silicon oxide or microcrystalline silicon p-layer. High-performance, tandem-type solar cell with amorphous and microcrystalline cells (double cells) has been achieved by applying this µc-SiO to the p-layer of both cells. Further work has been extended to triplejunction type solar cell using amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiO), amorphous silicon germanium (a-SiGe) and microcrystalline Si (µc-Si) films as i-layers of the top, middle and bottom cells, respectively. Up to now, cell efficiency of 15.7 % has been achieved using this novel µc-SiO. INTRODUCTION Microcrystalline silicon oxide (µc-SiO) deposited from the gas mixture of silane and carbondioxide using VHF plasma was reported by authors to be the promising material for thin-film silicon solar cell fabricated on glass substrate, comparing with the conventional amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiO) or microcrystalline silicon (µc-Si) p-layer [1]. Highperformance, tandem-type solar cell with amorphous and microcrystalline cells (double cells) has been achieved by applying this µc-SiO to the p-layer of both cells. On the other hand, several research laboratories are working with triple-junction type solar cells such as Kaneka Corp. [2] and United Solar Ovonic Corp. [3]. Both of them use a-Si, a-SiGe and µc-Si cells and obtained the efficiency as high as 15%. Since we found that higher performance can be obtained with µc-SiO p-layer and both of them did not use it in their triple cells, we can expect to achieve higher cell efficiency if we apply this µc-SiO p-layer into the triple cells. So our R&D about µc-SiO p-layer has been extended to triple-junction type solar cell. EXPERIMENT A cluster-type, multi-chamber system has been used to deposit various films such as Ag, ZnO, a-Si, a-SiO, a-SiGe, µc-Si and µc-SiO films on 30 cm x 40 cm area without breaking the pressure. The detailed cell structure of our triple cell is shown in Fig.1. VHF (Very High Frequency) of 60 MHz, carbon dioxide gas and higher hydrogen dilution are used for µc-SiO deposition. Tin-oxide coated, low-Fe glass is used as the substrate. Thin-film ZnO is deposited by DC sputtering on it in order to promote the crystallization of the µc-SiO p-layer. The i-layer of the top cell is normally deposited at lower substrate temperature in order to increase the open circuit voltage (Voc) of the cell. However, this lower temperature method can not be used with single
chamber configuration. Since our work will be extended to one single chamber in the future, we used a-SiO i-layer deposited by VHF pl
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