Hou Guofu

The study of a new n/p tunnel recombination junction and its application in a-Si:H/μc-Si:H tandem solar cells

This paper reports that a double N layer (a-Si:H/μc-Si:H) is used to substitute the single microcrystalline silicon n layer (n-μc-Si:H) in n/p tunnel recombination junction between subcells in a-Si:H/μc-Si:H tandem solar cells. The electrical transport and optical properties of these tunnel recombination junctions are investigated by current–voltage measurement and transmission measurement. The new n/p tunnel recombination junction shows a better ohmic contact. In addition, the n/p interface is exposed to the air to examine the effect of oxidation on the tunnel recombination junction performance. The open circuit voltage and FF of a-Si:H/μc-Si:H tandem solar cell are all improved and the current leakage of the subcells can be effectively prevented efficiently when the new n/p junction is implemented as tunnel recombination junction.

Optimization of n/i and i/p buffer layers in n-i-p hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon solar cells ∗

Hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H) intrinsic films and solar cells with n–i–p configuration were prepared by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). The influence of n/i and i/p buffer layers on the μc-Si:H cell performance was studied in detail. The experimental results demonstrated that the efficiency is much improved when there is a higher crystallinity at n/i interface and an optimized a-Si:H buffer layer at i/p interface. By combining the above methods, the performance of μc-Si:H single-junction and a-Si:H/μc-Si:H tandem solar cells has been significantly improved.

Analysis of heating effect on the process of high deposition rate microcrystalline silicon

A possible heating effect on the process of high deposition rate microcrystalline silicon has been studied. It includes the discharge time-accumulating heating effect, discharge power, inter-electrode distance, and total gas flow rate induced heating effect. It is found that the heating effects mentioned above are in some ways quite similar to and in other ways very different from each other. However, all of them will directly or indirectly cause the increase of the substrate surface temperature during the process of depositing microcrystalline silicon thin films, which will affect the properties of the materials with increasing time. This phenomenon is very serious for the high deposition rate of microcrystalline silicon thin films because of the high input power and the relatively small inter-electrode distance needed. Through analysis of the heating effects occurring in the process of depositing microcrystalline silicon, it is proposed that the discharge power and the heating temperature should be as low as possible, and the total gas flow rate and the inter-electrode distance should be suitable so that device-grade high quality deposition rate microcrystalline silicon thin films can be fabricated.

Influence of the total gas flow rate on high rate growth microcrystalline silicon films and solar cells

This paper reports that high-rate-deposition of microcrystalline silicon solar cells was performed by very-high-frequency plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. These solar cells, whose intrinsic μc-Si:H layers were prepared by using a different total gas flow rate (Ftotal), behave much differently in performance, although their intrinsic layers have similar crystalline volume fraction, opto-electronic properties and a deposition rate of ~ 1.0 nm/s. The influence of Ftotal on the micro-structural properties was analyzed by Raman and Fourier transformed infrared measurements. The results showed that the vertical uniformity and the compact degree of μc-Si:H thin films were improved with increasing Ftotal. The variation of the microstructure was regarded as the main reason for the difference of the J−V parameters. Combined with optical emission spectroscopy, we found that the gas temperature plays an important role in determining the microstructure of thin films. With Ftotal of 300 sccm, a conversion efficiency of 8.11% has been obtained for the intrinsic layer deposited at 8.5 A/s (1 A = 0.1 nm).