Influence of Minority Charge Carrier lifetime and Concentration on Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells Based on Double Antireflection Coating: A simulation study

Influence of Minority Charge Carrier lifetime and Concentration on Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells Based on Double Antireflection Coating: A simulation study

Deb Kumar Shah^1,3, Devendra KC^2,, Tae-Gwan Kim³, M. Shaheer Akhtar^3,4*, Chong Yeal Kim^4, and O-Bong Yang^1,3,4*

¹School of Semiconductor and Chemical Engineering, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, 54896, Republic of Korea

²Electrical Department, Gabriel Elektro AS, Lakselv, 9700, Norway

³Graduate School of Integrated Energy-AI, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, 54896, Republic of Korea

⁴New and Renewable Energy Materials Development Center (NewREC), Jeonbuk National University, Jeonbuk, 56332, Republic of Korea

*Corresponding authors: shaheerakhtar@jbnu.ac.kr (M. S. Akhtar), obyang@jbnu.ac.kr (O.B. Yang) 

Abstract:

In this work, the optoelectrical properties of silver doped zinc oxide (Ag-ZnO)/ZnO double antireflection coating (ARC) layer were investigated by a simulation approach in terms of their minority charge carriers and surface charge carrier concentrations. From the experimental results, the Ag-ZnO/ZnO double ARC layer on Si solar cells presented the reduced average reflectance by 7.58% which was lowered to ZnO and Ag-ZnO single ARC layer. The simulation study demonstrated the reasonable electron and hole densities of 1.75 x 10¹⁶ cm^-3 and 1.51 x 10¹⁶ cm^-3 on c-Si solar cells with Ag-ZnO/ZnO double ARC layer. The simulated I-V characteristics evidenced that the performances of Ag-ZnO/ZnO double ARC layer-based Si solar cells gradually increased with the increase of the minority carrier lifetimes. As compared to a single ARC layer, the Ag-ZnO/ZnO double ARC layer-based Si solar cell achieved the highest conversion efficiency 14.32% with a fill factor of 81.35% at a minority carrier lifetime of 10 µs and carrier concentration of 1x10¹⁷ cm^-3. The enhanced photovoltaic performance in Ag-ZnO/ZnO double ARC layer-based Si solar cells might be attributed to the high generation of electron-hole pairs, improved minority lifetime, and excellent carrier concentrations.  

Keywords: Double layer Antireflection, Charge Carrier lifetime, Carrier Concentration, Optoelectrical properties, Silicon solar cells. 

Optical Materials

Volume 121, November 2021, 111500

Citation:

Deb Kumar Shah, Devendra KC, Tae-Gwan Kim, M. Shaheer Akhtar, Chong Yeal Kim, O-Bong Yang, Influence of minority charge carrier lifetime and concentration on crystalline silicon solar cells based on double antireflection coating: A simulation study, Optical Materials, Volume 121, 2021, 111500, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optmat.2021.111500