Investigation of unusual shunting behavior due to phototransistor effect in n-type aluminum-alloyed rear junction solar cells

N-type silicon wafers have been found to offer numerous advantages over p-type silicon wafers, such that they are becoming more widely used for manufacturing high-efficiency commercial solar cells. This paper focuses on work done on n-type cell structures with a screen-printed aluminum-alloyed rear...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Solar energy materials and solar cells 2009-11, Vol.93 (11), p.1986-1993
Main Authors: Sugianto, Adeline, Tjahjono, Budi S., Mai, Ly, Wenham, Stuart R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aluminum-alloyed rear junction
Applied sciences
Behavior
Energy
Exact sciences and technology
Laser doping
N-type silicon solar cells
Natural energy
Phototransistors
Photovoltaic conversion
Q1
Schottky contacts
Shunting effect
Silicon
solar cells
Solar cells. Photoelectrochemical cells
Solar energy
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Summary:N-type silicon wafers have been found to offer numerous advantages over p-type silicon wafers, such that they are becoming more widely used for manufacturing high-efficiency commercial solar cells. This paper focuses on work done on n-type cell structures with a screen-printed aluminum-alloyed rear junction, laser-doped selective emitter and light-induced plated front contacts to suit large-scale commercial production. However, with such a cell structure we report unusual linear shunting behavior that is only present under illumination but disappears under dark conditions. It was shown that such a phenomenon can be represented by a phototransistor model. In fact, such shunting effects are found to have detrimental impacts on the cell short-circuit current density ( J sc ) and fill factor ( FF), which limits the efficiency of cells in this work to 12%.
ISSN:0927-0248
1879-3398
DOI:10.1016/j.solmat.2009.07.018