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Bowden, Stuart G.

Publications and source records attributed to Bowden, Stuart G..

5 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Temperature and illumination dependence of silicon heterojunction solar cells with a wide range of wafer resistivities

Abstract Recently, the significant improvements in the surface and contact passivation of silicon (Si) solar cells as well as their bulk quality have shifted their operating point to higher injections. Hence, they are less dependent on wafer doping. This shift opens an opportunity of using high‐resistivity wafers for practical photovoltaic applications, introducing a promising approach to push the cell efficiency towards the intrinsic limit and to improve the module reliability by increasing the cell breakdown voltage. Therefore, insights into the performance of Si solar cells using high‐resistivity wafers at various operating temperatures are of significant interest. In this study, we investigate the temperature‐ and illumination‐dependent performance of Si heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells using a wide range of wafer resistivities (between 3 and 1000 Ω⋅cm). Although a reduction in the passivation quality of the passivating contacts is observed at elevated temperature, the impact on the temperature coefficient of the open‐circuit voltage (TC V oc )—the dominant contributor to the temperature coefficient (TC) of the cell efficiency—is very limited. Their TC V oc are still dominated by the temperature dependence of the effective intrinsic carrier concentration. Furthermore, we also find that the investigated cells are more sensitive to temperature variation at lower illumination intensities. It is noteworthy that the efficiency of the cells fabricated using high‐resistivity wafers is comparable to that of the reference cells at any given temperature, highlighting the potential of using high‐resistivity wafers for solar cells.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Influence of the Bulk Resistivity on Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells and Module Reliability

Recent developments in industry on surface passivation open the possibility of using less doped substrates in silicon solar cells. In this report we investigate how the bulk resistivity affects the performance of silicon cells and the reliability of modules. Herein, n- and p-type silicon heterojunction cells with bulk resistivities between 3 and 15 000 Ωcm are studied. We measure the current–voltage characteristics of n-type cells across the resistivity range, and we find comparable responses to illumination intensities between 0.1 and 1 suns. The cells with bulk resistivities over 1000 Ωcm show breakdown voltages larger than -1000 V, almost two orders of magnitude higher than in typical commercial cells. Although modules have bypass-diodes to prevent cells from going into breakdown, higher breakdown voltages can improve the reliability of modules in case of bypass-diode failure and reduce the module cost by easing the number of bypass-diodes required. Finally, the cells have been submitted to light soaking. The float-zone p-type cells with bulk resistivities over 10 000 Ωcm are less sensitive to light-induced degradation than cells with bulk resistivities below 10 Ωcm. The former show to recover few hours after light soaking, while the latter recover only after dark annealing.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Impact of undoped substrates on high performance silicon solar cells

Today's highest-efficiency silicon solar cells typically operate near the threshold between low-level and high-level injection. It is not well understood if pushing further into a regime in which the cell operating point is solidly in high-level injection at all times of the day has further benefits for the solar cell performance. From a reliability perspective, cells fabricated on lower doped silicon have a larger breakdown voltage. This advantage can affect the design of modules allowing higher voltages and a relaxation of the number of bypass diodes needed. In this project, we present a comprehensive assessment, both experimental and using simulation, of how bulk resistivity, light intensity, and operation temperature impact the performance of the silicon solar cell. This work incorporates a comprehensive device physics analysis assisted by numerical simulation. The source code is now available under General Public License (GPL3), and to further leverage the findings of this project and outreach people outside of the scientific community, we are working with www.pveducation.org (which receives >1 million visitors a year) to create interactive content using our simulation results. The simulation results indicate that high bulk resistivity wafers (>>10 Ωcm) require bulk Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH) lifetimes in the millisecond range to outperform wafers with standard bulk resistivities (<10 Ωcm). Additionally, above bulk resistivities of 10 Ωcm (the exact value depends on the bulk characteristics of the wafer), the cell efficiency is weakly dependent on the bulk resistivity. As a result, ingot manufactures may have an opportunity to further reduce wafer cost by growing higher resistivity ingots that are more tolerant to resistivity variations. This project is particularly relevant today, as solar cell architectures with improved surface passivation and milliseconds lifetimes wafers are commercially available, leveraging potential benefits of using higher bulk resistivities. Outside of interdigitated back contact (IBC) cell, reported studies on high resistivity silicon (>100 Ωcm) are very limited. To the best of our knowledge, this project provides for the first-time experimental insight on solar cells fabricated on wafers with bulk resistivities up to several thousand Ωcm, delivering a comprehensive vision of their performance under real-world temperature and light intensity operation conditions. We manufactured and characterized solar cells with bulk resistivities in the range of 1 Ωcm to >15k Ωcm. Under standard testing conditions (STC), we measured solar cells efficiencies over 20% over the entire range of bulk resistivities, using our baseline cell processing. To evaluate the cell performance in real-world operation conditions, the solar cells were measured at different temperatures (25-80°C) and at different light intensities (0.1-1 suns). The measurements show that the bulk resistivity does not impact the solar cell response to temperature and light intensity. Similar thermal coefficients (TC) were measured for standard and high bulk resistivities, and they are comparable with the TC values reported in the literature for standard bulk resistivities <10 Ωcm. After light soaking, the solar cell didn’t show signs of light-induced degradation (LID). This result was expected since n-type float zone (FZ) wafers were used in this work, i.e. low traces of boron and low concentration of oxygen (oxygen is typically found in the seed end of Czochralski (CZ) ingots). We measured for high bulk resistivities (>10 Ωcm) extremely high breakdown voltages (>1000V). In conclusion, the insight provided by this project can positively impact the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of the photovoltaic systems through its effect on cell and ingot manufacturing yield, silicon cell power output, and module reliability.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗