New strategies in laser processing of TCOs for light management improvement in thin-film silicon solar cells
Date
2014
Authors
Lauzurica, S.
Lluscá, M.
Canteli, D.
Sánchez Aniorte, M.I.
López Vidrier, J.
Hernández, S.
Bertomeu, J.
Molpeceres, C.
Editors
Reutzel, E.W.
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Conference paper
Citation
Proceedings of SPIE, 2014 / Reutzel, E.W. (ed./s), vol.9180, iss.article no. 918006, pp.1-8
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
Proceedings of SPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering (20 Aug 2014 - 21 Aug 2014 : San Diego, United States)
Abstract
Light confinement strategies play a crucial role in the performance of thin-film (TF) silicon solar cells. One way to reduce the optical losses is the texturing of the transparent conductive oxide (TCO) that acts as the front contact. Other losses arise from the mismatch between the incident light spectrum and the spectral properties of the absorbent material that imply that low energy photons (below the bandgap value) are not absorbed, and therefore can not generate photocurrent.
Up-conversion techniques, in which two sub-bandgap photons are combined to give one photon with a better matching with the bandgap, were proposed to overcome this problem. In particular, this work studies two strategies to improve light management in thin film silicon solar cells using laser technology. The first one addresses the problem of TCO surface texturing using fully commercial fast and ultrafast solid state laser sources.
Aluminum doped Zinc Oxide (AZO) samples were laser processed and the results were optically evaluated by measuring the haze factor of the treated samples. As a second strategy, laser annealing experiments of TCOs doped with rare earth ions are presented as a potential process to produce layers with up-conversion properties, opening the possibility of its potential use in high efficiency solar cells.
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Dissertation Note
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Description
Data source: Supplementary information, https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2061712
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Copyright 2014 SPIE