Publication: A Comparative Study on p- and n-Type Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells by AFORS-HET
Date
2022
Authors
Alkharasani W.
Amin N.
Shahahmadi S.
Alkahtani A.
Bintimohamad I.
Chelvanathan P.
Kiong T.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
MDPI
Abstract
Despite the increasing trend of n-type silicon wafer utilization in the manufacturing of high-efficiency heterojunction solar cells due to the superior advantages over p-type counterparts, its high manufacturing cost remains to be one of the most crucial factors, which impedes its market share growth with state-of-the-art silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells demonstrating high conversion efficiencies from various configurations, the prospect of using an n-type wafer is debatable from a cost-efficiency point of view. Hence, a systematic comparison between p- and n-type SHJ solar cells was executed in this work using AFORS-HET numerical software. Front and rear-emitter architectures were selected for each type of wafer with ideal (without defects) and non-ideal (with defects) conditions. For ideal conditions, solar cells with p-type wafers and a front-emitter structure resulted in a maximum conversion efficiency of 28%, while n-type wafers demonstrated a maximum efficiency of 26% from the rear-emitter structure. These high-performance devices were possible due to the optimization of the bandgap and electron-affinity for all passivating and doping layers with values ranging from 1.3 to 1.7 eV and 3.9 to 4 eV, respectively. The correlation between the device structure and the type of wafers as demonstrated here will be helpful for the development of both types of solar cells with comparable performance. � 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Description
Competition; Conversion efficiency; Defects; Electron affinity; Manufacture; Production efficiency; Silicon solar cells; Silicon wafers; AFORS-HET; Crystalline silicon solar cells; Heterojunction solar cells; N type silicon; N- and p-type wafer; P-type silicon; P-type wafer; Rear and front-emitter; Silicon heterojunctions; Simulation; Heterojunctions