Journal ArticleDOI
Impurities in silicon solar cells
J. R. Davis,Ajeet Rohatgi,R. H. Hopkins,P.D. Blais,P. Rai-Choudhury,J.R. McCormick,H.C. Mollenkopf +6 more
TLDR
In this article, the effects of various metallic impurities, both singly and in combinations, on the performance of silicon solar cells have been studied and an analytic model was developed which predicts cell performance as a function of the secondary impurity concentrations.Abstract:
The effects of various metallic impurities, both singly and in combinations, on the performance of silicon solar cells have been studied. Czochralski crystals were grown with controlled additions of secondary impurities. The primary dopants were boron and phosphorus while the secondaires were: A1, B, C, Ca, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Mo, Nb, P, Pd, Ta, Ti, V, W, Zn, and Zr. Impurity concentrations ranged from 1010to 1017/cm3. Solar cells were made using a conventional diffusion process and were characterized by computer reduction of I-V data. The collected data indicated that impurity-induced performance loss was primarily due to reduction of the base diffusion length. Based on this observation, an analytic model was developed which predicts cell performance as a function of the secondary impurity concentrations. The calculated performance parameters are in good agreement with measured values except for Cu, Ni, and Fe, which at higher concentrations, degrade the cell substantially by means of junction mechanisms. This behavior can be distinguished from base diffusion length effects by careful analysis of the I-V data. The effects of impurities in n-base and p-base devices differ in degree but submit to the same modeling analysis. A comparison of calculated and measured performance for multiple impurities indicates a limited interaction between impurities, e.g., copper appears to improve titanium-doped cells.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Transition metals in silicon
TL;DR: In this paper, a review on the diffusion, solubility and electrical activity of 3D transition metals in silicon is given, which can be divided into two groups according to the respective enthalpy of formation of the solid solution.
Journal ArticleDOI
Photovoltaic materials, history, status and outlook
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the history, the present status and possible future developments of photovoltaic (PV) materials for terrestrial applications and discuss the physical and technical limitations of this material.
Journal ArticleDOI
High-efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells: status and perspectives
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review the dynamic field of crystalline silicon photovoltaics from a device-engineering perspective and give an up-to-date summary of promising recent pathways for further efficiency improvements and cost reduction employing novel carrierselective passivating contact schemes, as well as tandem multi-junction architectures, in particular those that combine silicon absorbers with organic-inorganic perovskite materials.
Journal ArticleDOI
Identifying defect-tolerant semiconductors with high minority-carrier lifetimes: beyond hybrid lead halide perovskites
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose that defect tolerance emerges from fundamental electronic-structure properties, including the orbital character of the conduction and valence band extrema, the chargecarrier effective masses, and the static dielectric constant.
Journal ArticleDOI
Energy-conversion properties of vapor-liquid-solid-grown silicon wire-array photocathodes.
Shannon W. Boettcher,Joshua M. Spurgeon,Morgan C. Putnam,Emily L. Warren,Daniel B. Turner-Evans,Michael D. Kelzenberg,James R. Maiolo,Harry A. Atwater,Nathan S. Lewis +8 more
TL;DR: The inherent performance of these wires thus conceptually allows the development of efficient photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical energy-conversion devices based on a radial junction platform.
References
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Deep‐level transient spectroscopy: A new method to characterize traps in semiconductors
TL;DR: Deep Level Transformer Spectroscopy (DLTS) as discussed by the authors is a high-frequency capacitance transient thermal scanning method useful for observing a wide variety of traps in semiconductors, which can display the spectrum of traps as positive and negative peaks on a flat baseline as a function of temperature.
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Capacitance Transient Spectroscopy
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Application of the superposition principle to solar-cell analysis
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used the principle of superposition to derive from fundamentals the widely used shifting approximation that the currentvoltage characteristic of an illuminated solar cell is the dark current-voltage characteristics shifted by the short-circuit photocurrent.
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Effect of titanium, copper and iron on silicon solar cells
TL;DR: The effect of Ti, Cu and Fe on silicon solar cells has been investigated in this article, where the authors found that the active center density of both Ti and Fe is only a very small fraction of the total impurity content in the starting silicon wafer.
Journal ArticleDOI
A method for determining the emitter and base lifetimes in p-n junction diodes
TL;DR: In this paper, a method for the first time to separate and determine the emitter and base lifetimes in a p-n diode after the junction has been fabricated is described.