Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon-Based Thin Film Solar Cell: Optical, Electrical and Structural Properties

Abstract:

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) has been developed as an important materials in thin film-based photovoltaic technologies because of considerable cost reduction as a result of low material consumption and low-temperature process. Among the materials used for thin film solar cells, amorphous silicon is the most important material in the commercial production. Despite of these benefits, the efficiency limit for a single band gap thin film based solar cell predicted by Shockley and Queisser (i.e. ~31%) has become a matter of challenge for current research community. Considering the thermodynamic behavior of a single threshold absorber in generating electricity from solar irradiance, this limit seems inevitable, and thus a tremendous investigation is now being carried out in different dimensions such as hot carrier generation, rainbow solar cell, multiple exciton generation, multiband absorber etc. Nonetheless, so far reported efficiency (η_lab~12%) provide enough room to improve and take challenge to reach to the highest value for a-Si:H based solar cell design. Further to improve architectural design as well as engineer the materials, it is indispensable to understand the optical, electrical and structural properties of aSi:H as an active layer. Here in this article, an attempt was taken into account to focus on such characteristics that affect the overall cell efficiency.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volume 1116)
• Pages: 59-64
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.1116.59
• Online since: July 2015
• Authors: Mohammad Kamal Hossain*
• Keywords: Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon, Properties, Solar Cell, Thin Film

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