3-D Modeling of Multicrystalline Silicon Materials and Solar Cells

We present a method to model large-area multicrystalline materials using Quokka3, based on artificially generated lifetime images created by combining injection-dependent intragrain lifetimes and defect recombination velocity maps extracted from photoluminescence-based lifetime images. It is found t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE journal of photovoltaics Vol. 9; no. 4; pp. 965 - 973
Main Authors Sio, Hang Cheong, Fell, Andreas, Phang, Sieu Pheng, Wang, Haitao, Zheng, Peiting, Chen, D. K., Zhang, Xinyu, Zhang, Tao, Jin, Hao, Macdonald, Daniel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Piscataway IEEE 01.07.2019
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects
Computational modeling
Computer simulation
Crystal defects
Crystals
Diffusion effects
Grain boundaries
impurities
Lifetime
Numerical models
Photoluminescence
Photovoltaic cells
Polycrystals
Semiconductor device modeling
Silicon
Solar cells
Solid modeling
Three dimensional models
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Summary:We present a method to model large-area multicrystalline materials using Quokka3, based on artificially generated lifetime images created by combining injection-dependent intragrain lifetimes and defect recombination velocity maps extracted from photoluminescence-based lifetime images. It is found that simulations based only on measured lifetime images underestimate the detrimental impacts of crystal defects and, hence, overestimate the overall cell performance of multicrystalline silicon solar cells. As demonstration, we applied Quokka3 simulations to resolve various bulk recombination losses in industrial multicrystalline silicon solar cells, quantify the effects of phosphorus diffusion and hydrogenation on the final cell performance, and evaluate the detrimental impact of crystal defects on individual cell parameters. Through numerical simulations, this paper has also demonstrated the potential errors of using a single average value to predict the cell performance of inhomogeneous multicrystalline silicon materials. It is observed that the commonly used harmonic mean can provide a good indication for V oc , but is less effective for predicting J sc , and is almost entirely ineffective for predicting the fill factor.
ISSN:2156-3381
2156-3403
DOI:10.1109/JPHOTOV.2019.2914874