Technology and economics of three advanced silicon solar cells

✍ Scribed by Martin A. Green; David Jordan

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 309 KB
• Volume: 6
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1062-7995
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-159x(199805/06)6:3<169::aid-pip217>3.0.co;2-5

✦ Synopsis

This paper describes the structure, processing and economics of three dierence silicon solar cell technologies developed at the University of New South Wales.

The ®rst is the high-eciency PERL (Passivated Emitter, Rear Locally-diused) cell technology which has produced the highest ever eciency silicon solar cells and photovoltaic modules. These cells have a sophisticated cell structure and require highquality materials and advanced microelectronic-quality technology in their processing.

The second is the buried contact solar cell technology, presently the most successfully commercialized solar cell technology developed over the last 15 years. This structure retains the key features of the PERL cell required for high eciency, while reducing material and processing costs to those comparable to previous commercial screen-printing silicon solar cell approaches.

The third technology holds great promise for the future. This multilayer cell technology is based on combining features of the buried contact cell technology with a multijunction thin-®lm approach to produce thin-®lm polycrystalline silicon solar cells of potentially high eciency on low-cost substrates such as glass.