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Amorphous and Microcrystalline Silicon Based Solar Cells and Modules on Textured Zinc Oxide Coated Glass Substrates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Bernd Rech
Affiliation:
Institute of Photovoltaics - IPV, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
Joachim Müller
Affiliation:
Institute of Photovoltaics - IPV, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
Tobias Repmann
Affiliation:
Institute of Photovoltaics - IPV, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
Oliver Kluth
Affiliation:
Institute of Photovoltaics - IPV, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
Tobias Roschek
Affiliation:
Institute of Photovoltaics - IPV, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
Jürgen Hüpkes
Affiliation:
Institute of Photovoltaics - IPV, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
Helmut Stiebig
Affiliation:
Institute of Photovoltaics - IPV, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
Wolfgang Appenzeller
Affiliation:
Institute of Photovoltaics - IPV, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
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Abstract

This paper addresses scientific and technological efforts to develop highly efficient silicon thin film solar modules on glass substrates. We present a comprehensive study of μc-Si:H p-i-n single junction and a-Si:H/μc-Si:H stacked solar cells prepared by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) at 13.56 MHz excitation frequency. In the first step cell development was performed in a small area PECVD reactor showing the relationship between deposition process and resulting solar cell performance. Subsequent up-scaling to a substrate area of 30×30 cm2 confirmed the scalability to large area reactors. Moreover, we developed textured ZnO:Al films by sputtering and post deposition wet chemical etching as front contact TCO-material with excellent light scattering properties. A-Si:H/μc-Si:H tandem cells developed on this textured ZnO yielded stable efficiencies up to 11.2 % for a cell area of 1 cm2. First solar modules were prepared in our recently installed process technology, which includes PECVD, sputtering, texture etching and laser scribing on substrate sizes up to 30x30 cm2. Initial module efficiencies of 10.8 % and 10.1 % were achieved for aperture areas of 64 cm2 and 676 cm2, respectively.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2003

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