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Thin Film Solar Cells

Thin Film Solar Cells


Bernd Schmidt

01.02.2008

Thin Film Solar Cells Physical Basics

Semiconductors

Metal: VB / CB overlap SC: energy gap eV Isolator: high energy gap (> 4.5eV ) charge transport with electrons and with electronhole-pairs

Thin Film Solar Cells Physical Basics

pn-junction, photovoltaic eect

Fermi-niveau adjusts in crystal. Pairs may be seperated at the pn-junction.

Thin Film Solar Cells Physical Basics

Shockley-Queisser Limit
Shockley-Queisser Limit: The eciency of a photovoltaic cell is limited by energy losses (particularly 1 and 2). Thereby, the classical cells have an eciency maximum of 33%.

1. low energy photons 2. relaxation from higher energies 3. energy dierence between layers 4. passage into contacting electrodes 5. recombination

Thin Film Solar Cells Forms of Solar Cells

1st Generation

mono or poly crystalline semiconductor-plates, doped and contacted advantage: simple fabrication, allready existing for electronics disadvantage: nonelastic, expensive, waste of material

Thin Film Solar Cells Forms of Solar Cells

2nd Generation

thin lm cells with crystalline, amorph or organic semiconductors advantage: cheap, elastic, less waste disadvantage: lower eciency, lower durability

Thin Film Solar Cells Forms of Solar Cells

3rd Generation
tandem cells with multiple thin lms advantage: higher eciencies disadvantage: dicult implementation (more energy losses) Shockley-Queisser-Limit: max. eciency 33% energy losses with higher or lower energies

Thin Film Solar Cells Fabrication of Solar Cells

mono crystalline wavers

High-purity silicon is melted and and grown as a single crystal. Then the crystal is sawed to wavers and polished, doped and contacted. advantage: wavers are allready produced disadvantage: 50% of the material are lost

Thin Film Solar Cells Fabrication of Solar Cells

poly crystalline silicon

Silicon is melted and cast on a poly crystalline surface. It crystallizes also poly crystalline.

advantage: fabrication even cheaper than wavers, user-dened form of crystals disadvantage: still much waste, lower eciency

Thin Film Solar Cells Fabrication of Solar Cells

Edge-dened Film-fed Growth (EFG)- Silicon

Octagonal thin crystals are grown. The crystals can be several m thick.

advantage: nearly no waste, directly thin lms disadvantage: lower eciency (more imperfections)

Thin Film Solar Cells Fabrication of Solar Cells

Generation of thin Films


1. sputtering of a transparent conductive oxyd layer (TCO) on glass 2. structuring of the TCO layer with a laser 3. deposition of thin doped silicon layers 4. silicon structuring with laser 5. sputtering of back contact (Al) 6. back contact structuring with laser advantage: very precise fabrication, nearly no waste disadvantage: (in case of silicon) special atmosphere / vacuum needed

Thin Film Solar Cells Fabrication of Solar Cells

Doping
Diusion: donators / acceptors gaseous in special atmosphere diusion into crystal at about 800 1200 C concentration dened by endurance and temperature Ion Implantation: ion beam shot on crystal concentration dened by energy and angle of beam

Thin Film Solar Cells Thin Film Cells

CdTe-Cells

large-scaled semiconductor-lms possible deposition and doping also in oxygenic atmosphere no surface sealing band gap 1.5 2.4eV

Thin Film Solar Cells Thin Film Cells

CIS-Cells
(nearly) user-dened band gap (various similar materials) better tandem cells (less crystalline structure imperfections)

very elastic even textile solar cells cheap

Thin Film Solar Cells Thin Film Cells

Organic Semiconductors

no more doping no sputtering InkJet printing Plastic Solar Cells extremely elastic sensitization by pigments Spaghetti and Peas

Thin Film Solar Cells Thin Film Cells

Spaghetti and Peas

The absorber (spaghetti) take the energy of the photons passing it to the acceptors (peas). The acceptors transport the electrons to the back contact (Al). Caused by this process splitting there are much less recombination and more re-adsorbtion processes.

Thin Film Solar Cells Thin Film Cells

Sensitization
1. photon absorption 2. electron transfer to SC 3. electron transport in SC 4. ohmic back contact 5. small voltage at front contact 6. small resistance in electrolyte 7. fast regeneration

fast injection of electrons into TiO2 (fs ps) slow back transfer (ns ms) slow recombination in the pigment (60ns)

Thin Film Solar Cells Applications

Applications
cheap power supply (e.g. Eldorado) small integrated solar cells architectical implementation of solar cells with shading eects

Thin Film Solar Cells Sources

Sources
Prof. Dr. Derck Schlettwein, Dnnschicht-Solarzellen - Alternativen zur klassischen Si-Technologie u Photovoltaik Neue Horizonte, ForschungsVerbund Sonnenenergie, Berlin 2004 H. Stroppe Physik fr Studenten der Natur- und Ingenieurwissenschaften, Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, Mnchen 2005 u u D.C.Giancoli Physik 3. Auage, Pearson, Mnchen 2006 u M. Lux-Steiner und G. Willeke, Physikalische Bltter 57, 47 (2001) a http://www.iea-pvps.org/ar04/che.htm W.Jaegermann, D.Whrle, M.Kunst, VW-Foundation o TCO fr Dnnschicht- Solarzellen, ForschungsVerbund Sonnenenergie, Berlin 2001 u u C.Brabec, A.Cravino, D.Meissner, N.S.Sariciftci, T.Fromherz, M.Rispens, L.Sanchez, J.C.Hummelen, Adv. Funct.Mat. 11, 374 (2001) http://www.fz-juelich.de/ste/datapool/Energieplattform/Vortrag%20Energieplattform%202.pdf http://www.uni-saarland.de/fak7/fze/AKE Archiv/AKE2004F/AKE2004F Vortraege/ AKE 2004F 05Glunz Photovoltaik uf.pdf http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/1368/1/senior stud 2007 01 02.pdf http://www.halbleiter.org/waferherstellung/index?thema=dotieren http://www.imtek.de/anwendungen/content/upload/vorlesung/2005/ mst t&p 04 duennschichttechnik (teil 3 vom 05.12.2005).pdf

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