No description available.

To make solar energy mainstream, lower-cost and more efficient power generation is key. A lot of effort in the silicon photovoltaic industry has gone into using fewer raw materials (i.e., silicon) and using more inexpensive processing techniques and materials to reduce cost. Utilizing thinner substrates not only reduces cost, but improves cell efficiency provided both front and back surfaces are well-passivated. In the current work, a kerf-less process is developed in which ultra-thin (~25 [mu]m), flexible mono-crystalline silicon substrates can be obtained through an exfoliation technique from a thicker parent wafer. These substrates, when exfoliated, have thick metal backing which provides mechanical support to the thin silicon and enables ease of processing of the substrates for device fabrication. Optical, electrical, and reliability characterization studies for completed cells show this technology’s compatibility with a heterojunction solar cell process flow. Building on the promising results achieved on exfoliated substrates, further optimization work was carried out. Namely, an improved cleaning process was developed to remove front surface contamination on textured surfaces of exfoliated, flexible mono-crystalline silicon. This process is very effective at cleaning metallic and organic residues, without introducing additional contamination or degrading the supporting back metal used for ultra-thin substrate handling. Spectroscopic studies were performed to qualitatively and quantitatively understand the efficacy of different cleaning procedures in order to develop the new cleaning process. Results of the spectroscopic studies were further supported by comparing the electrical performance of cells fabricated with different cleans. To replace silver as contact metal with a cheaper substitute like nickel or copper, patterning and etching processes are generally used. A low-cost alternative is proposed, where a reusable shadow mask with a metal grid pattern is kept in contact with the surface of the substrate in a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition chamber during silicon nitride deposition. This leaves a patterned silicon surface for selective metal growth by direct electro-deposition. The viability of this process flow is demonstrated by fabricating diffused junction n[superscript+]pp[superscript+] monofacial and bifacial cells and electrically characterizing them. Investigation of the factors limiting the efficiency of the cells was carried out by lifetime measurement experiments. / text

Silicon-based nanostructures are essential building blocks for nanoelectronic devices and nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS). As the silicon device size continues to scale down, the surface to volume ratio becomes larger, rendering the properties of surfaces and interfaces more important for improving the properties of the nano-devices and systems. One of those properties is the friction, which is important in controlling the functionality and reliability of the nano-device and systems. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the deformation and friction behaviors of single crystalline silicon nanolines (SiNLs) using nanoindentation techniques. Following an introduction and a summary of the theoretical background of contact friction in Chapters 1 and 2, the results of this thesis are presented in three chapters. In Chapter 3, the fabrication of the silicon nanolines is described. The fabrication method yielded high-quality single-crystals with line width ranging from 30nm to 90nm and height to width aspect ratio ranging from 10 to 25. These SiNL structures have properties and dimensions well suited for the study of the mechanical and friction behaviors at the nanoscale. In Chapter 4, we describe the study of the mechanical properties of SiNLs using the nanoindentation method. The loading-displacement curves show that the critical load to induce the buckling of the SiNLs can be correlated to the contact friction and geometry of SiNLs. A map was built as a guideline to describe the selection of buckling modes. The map was divided into three regions where different regions correlate to different buckling modes including Mode I, Mode II and slidingbending of SiNLs. In Chapter 5, we describe the study of the contact friction of the SiNL structures. The friction coefficient at the contact was extracted from the loaddisplacement curves. Subsequently, the frictional shear stress was evaluated. In addition, the effect of the interface between the indenter and SiNLs was investigated using SiNLs with surfaces coated by a thin silicon dioxide or chromium film. The material of the interface was found to influence significantly the contact friction and its behavior. Cyclic loading-unloading experiments showed the friction coefficient dramatically changed after only a few loading cycles, indicating the contact history is important in controlling the friction behaviors of SiNLs at nanoscales. This thesis is concluded with a summary of the results and proposed future studies. / text

This paper reports the surface morphologies and ablation of crystalline silicon wafers irradiated by infra-red 775 nm Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser. The effects of energy fluences (below and above single-pulse modification) with different number of pulses were studied. New morphological features such as pits, cracks formation, Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures (LIPSS) and ablation were observed. The investigation indicated that there are two distinct mechanisms under femtosecond laser irradiation: low fluence regime with different morphological features and high fluence regime with high material removal and without complex morphological features. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Efficient optical-to-electrical conversion is a fundamental requirement of a range of silicon devices such as those which employ photodetection, solid-state-imaging and photovoltaic power generation. This thesis investigates the effects of using indium, a deep-level acceptor in silicon, as a dopant for thin film single crystalline silicon solar cells and UV-A detectors. Indium acts as a p-type dopant in silicon and has been proposed previously as a substitutional lattice defect that would enable sub-band gap transitions as described by the so-called impurity photovoltaic (IPV) effect. The physical mechanisms responsible for operation of the devices presented in this work are described. Models for electrical performance, optical absorbance and device fabrication are used as methods to interpret data and optimize device parameters. Specifically, a two-diode model is used to account for the electrical loss mechanisms within a device, while modeling optical absorption by a multilayer structure consisting of Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) is approached using a novel multi-wavelength numerical model that describes the reflections and transmissions at each of the device’s layers. Additionally, Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) simulations were used to optimize the critical fabrication parameters associated with the ion implantation and thermal annealing techniques used during the device fabrication process. Selected from multiple devices fabricated during the course of this work, the most efficient solar cells in SOI (2.5 μm thick active layer) exhibited a maximum conversion efficiency of 4.74 % for indium-doped and 4.16 % for boron-doped layers. The most efficient UV-A detector fabricated in SOI (100 nm thick) exhibited a maximum responsivity to 365 nm light of 20 mA/W for indium-doped and 16 mA/W for boron-doped devices. In both types of devices, indium doping consistently resulted in a relative increase in efficiency when compared to equivalently fabricated, boron doped devices, despite experimental carrier decay measurements confirming the action of the indium as a recombination centre. External and internal quantum efficiency measurements confirm a relative enhancement in absorption, for solar cells and detectors doped with indium, which is correlated with the p-type dopant concentration and the ratio of n-type to p-type concentrations. The origin of the enhancement is postulated to be caused by a relaxation of the momentum-space restrictions associated with undoped silicon, a postulate supported by previously reported absorption data. This thesis presents the first comprehensive data from indium doped silicon devices designed for optical-to-electrical conversion. The implications for a range of widely deployed devices may be significant. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The huge environmental awareness emerging last years by reason of global warming and greenhouse effect, on one hand, and the need of finding other sources of energy production and conversion due to the declining of fossil resources and the increasing cost of this kind of energy resource, on the other hand, both have led position renewable energies as a powerful alternative on the energy production and conversion. PV-systems have emerged at an exponential rate in recent year as the main candidate and a satisfactory possibility with respect to environmental and economic sustainability. Nowadays, the large volume on photovoltaic market is currently dominated by four types of solar cells, divided by the semiconductor material used to absorb light and convert the energy into electricity: (1) crystalline silicon (monocrystalline and polycrystalline), (2) amorphous silicon, (3) CIGS and (4) cadmium telluride; and among them, monocrystalline silicon and CIGS technologies are installed on the building 45 of the University of Gävle, at the south face of the laboratory. In this context and with the motivation to contribute knowledge on PV field, a comparison between single crystal solar technology and thin film CIGS technology has carried out through f ratio and performance ratio procedures in order to perform an assessment of the energy conversion of each one under field conditions. A logger monitors the power conversion from the PV modules since June 2014 while two pyranometers monitor global and diffuse solar radiation since March 2016. It must take into account that only clear sunny days have been considered during a period from 8:00 to 14:00 in order to avoid shadows effect on the PV systems. The results come to conclude that single crystal silicon modules present a better behavior with respect to energy conversion under no shadows effect conditions by two reason: (1) f ratio, relationship of PV conversion per kW (PV yield) between CIGS and single crystal silicon, is about 87.25% with some variations along a day due to ambient temperature, cell temperature and incidence angle; (2) PV module's performance ratio of monocrystalline silicon modules is higher than thin film CIGS ones during a sunny day about 87.56% and 76.38%, respectively; and they are consistent with usual performance ratio values between 80% and 90% since 2010 onwards. In light of the outcome and in order to confirm these conclusions, it intends to launch a project with the objective of evaluating the data collected and compare the performance of the module after a year of measurements outdoors by the PV module's performance ratio procedure. Along the same lines, the next step of the University of Gävle will be to launch a project with the objective of evaluating the potential to be self-sufficient.

Mit wellenlängenabhängigen Messungen der Oberflächenphotospannung (Surface Photovoltage, SPV) lässt sich die Diffusionslänge von Ladungsträgern im Volumen von Siliziumproben messen. Das Ziel der Arbeit war es, mit Hilfe temperatur- und injektionsabhängiger Messungen der Diffusionslänge die Natur rekombinationsaktiver Defekte in kristallinem Silizium zu untersuchen. Im Rahmen der Arbeit wurde eine zu diesem Zwecke geeignete Messanlage sowie die nötigen Mess- und Auswerteprozeduren entwickelt. Die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der aufgebauten Anlage wurden durch Messungen an gezielt mit Eisen, Kupfer oder Chrom verunreinigten mono- und multikristallinen Siliziumproben bewertet. Es zeigt sich, dass die SPV-Methode in einem jeweils begrenzten Temperatur- und Injektionsbereich bei Vorhandensein dominanter Defekte zur Defekt-Spektroskopie einsetzbar ist. Eine Anwendung fand das Verfahren an industriell relevantem, aufbereitetem metallurgischen Silizium (umg-Si).

This thesis presents a work which has been devoted to the growth of silicon thin films on crystalline silicon for photovoltaic applications by means of RF PECVD. The primary goal of this work was to obtain an amorphous growth on any c-Si surface in order to provide an efficient passivation, as required in heterojunction solar cells. Indeed, we demonstrated that epitaxial or mixed phase growths, easy to obtain on (100) Si, would lead to poor surface passivation. We proved that growing a few nm thin a-Si1-xCx:H alloy film was an efficient, stable and reproducible way to hinder epitaxy while keeping an excellent surface passivation by the subsequent deposition of a-Si:H films. Process optimization mainly based on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry, Effective lifetime measurements (Sinton lifetime tester) and current-voltage characterization led us to demonstrate that it was possible to obtain a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cells with stable VOC of 710 mV and FF of 76 % on flat (n) c-Si wafers, with solar cells of 25 cm2 whose metallization was realized by screen-printing technology. This work has also demonstrated the viability of a completely dry process where the native oxide is removed by SiF4 plasma etching instead of the wet HF removal. Last but not least, the epitaxial growth of silicon thin films, undoped and n or p-type doped, on (100)-oriented surfaces has been studied by Spectroscopic Ellipsometry and Hall effect measurements. We have been able to fabricate homojunction solar cells with a p-type emitter as well as p-i-n structures with an undoped epitaxial absorber on a heavily-doped (p) c-Si wafers.

Crystalline silicon solar cells translate energy from the sun into electrical energy via the photoelectric effect. This technology has the potential to simultaneously reduce carbon emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels. The cost of photovoltaic energy, however, is still higher than the cost of electricity off of the grid which hampers this technologies adoption. Raising solar cell efficiency without significantly raising the cost is crucial to lowering the cost of photovoltaic produced energy. One technology which holds promise to increase solar cell efficiency is a selective emitter solar cell. In this work the benefit of selective emitter solar cells is quantified through numerical modeling. Further, the use of ultraviolet laser to create a laser doped selective emitter solar cell is explored. Through optimization of the laser doping process to minimize laser induced defects it is shown that this process can increase solar cell efficiency to over 19.1%. Additionally, 2D and 3D numerical modeling are performed to determine the limitations screen printed interdigitated back contact solar cells and the practical efficiency limit for crystalline Si solar cells.

abstract: The objective of this thesis is to achieve a detailed understanding of the loss mechanisms in SHJ solar cells. The working principles of these cells and what affects the cell operation, e.g. the IV characteristics at the maximum power point (MPP) and the correspondingly ll factor (FF) are investigated. Dierent loss sources are analyzed separately, and the weight of each in the total loss at the MPP are evaluated. The total series resistance is measured and then compared with the value obtained through summation over each of its components. In other words, series resistance losses due to recombination, vertical and lateral carrier transport, metalization, etc, are individually evaluated, and then by adding all these components together, the total loss is calculated. The concept of ll factor and its direct dependence on the loss mechanisms at the MPP of the device is explained, and its sensitivity to nearly every processing step of the cell fabrication is investigated. This analysis provides a focus lens to identify the main source of losses in SHJ solar cells and pave the path for further improvements in cell efficiency. In this thesis, we provide a detailed understanding of the FF concept; we explain how it can be directly measured; how it can be calculated and what expressions can better approximate its value and under what operating conditions. The relation between FF and cell operating condition at the MPP is investigated. We separately analyzed the main FF sources of losses including recombination, sheet resistance, contact resistance and metalization. We study FF loss due to recombination and its separate components which include the Augur, radiative and SRH recombination is investigated. We study FF loss due to contact resistance and its separate components which include the contact resistance of dierent interfaces, e.g. between the intrinsic and doped a-Si layers, TCO and a-Si layers. We also study FF loss due to lateral transport and its components that including the TCO sheet resistance, the nger and the busbars resistances. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2018