Project Title: Ultra-thin silicon PV solar cells
Project Leader: Andrew G. Flood and Kevin Boyd
Supervisor: Prof. Nazir P. Kherani and Prof. Rafael Kleiman
Other Member(s): Zahidur R. Chowdhury, Kitty Kumar and Eric Janssen
My role: Passivation and inverted pyramid texturization of ultra-thin silicon membranes
Tools used: Oxford PlasmaLab 100 PECVD System / Sinton Silicon Lifetime Tester / Semilab’s µ-PCD lifetime tester / Mask aligner / Chemical etching
Summary
- The light trapping mechanisms to mitigate reduction in absorption and improved passivation for the 10 μm thick silicon wafers were investigated in this study. A novel method to fabricate a high efficiency solar cell on a 10 μm thick silicon membrane. The method involves in-house fabrication of 10 μm thick membranes and integration of optically efficacious inverted pyramid texture with feature size and pitch on the order of the solar wavelength via a resist-free laser-writing method. Facile grown native oxide and PECVD silicon nitride passivation was also explored for this thin membrane.
- Figure: (left) fabricated high fidelity array of 5 μm inverted-pyramids (right) Total reflectance for only silicon membrane and the membrane with 5 μm and 1.3 μm inverted pyramid textured surface.
Publication(s)
Andrew G. Flood, Kevin Boyd, Zahidur R. Chowdhury, Paul G. O'Brien, Rafael Kleiman and Nazir P. Kherani, “Optical characterization of selectively transparent and conducting photonic crystals for use in thin crystalline silicon photovoltaics”, presented in 39th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, pp. 1856-1860, Tampa Bay, FL, 2013. view / link
Kevin M. W. Boyd, Kitty Kumar, Eric Janssen, Zahidur R. Chowdhury, Nazir P. Kherani and Rafael Kleiman, “Novel method for fabricating high efficiency 10 micron thick c-Si solar cells”, presented in 39th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialist Conference, pp. 0539-0542, Tampa Bay, FL, 2013. view / link