A Solar Cell Design That Has The Potential To Break the Efficiency Record

What is it about?

The window layer of a solar cell is critical for the amount of power generated by the cell. One of the most popular solar cell type is the crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cell (the HIT cell), where a p-doped thin film silicon or its alloy (pDTF-Si/A) is used as the window layer. However, the parasitic light absorbance in the pDTF-Si/A window layer and the use of toxic, explosive diborane gas used for p-doping are limiting factors for achieving HIT cells with reduced processing costs and / or higher power generation. In this work, pDTF-Si/A is replaced by V2Ox, which is deposited by a cheaper deposition technique with no doping. Furthermore, the investigation of the parameters associated with power generation indicates that the HIT solar cell with the V2Ox window layer has the potential to generate more power than the conventional HIT cell.

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Why is it important?

This solar cell design with the novel window layer has the potential to outperform the HIT solar cell (SHJ solar cell), that holds the record for the efficiency converting light into electric power, as well as being cheaper to process.