Although the reported efficiencies of thin-film silicon-based cells still lag behind those of conventional first-generation silicon cells, more developments are being conducted in order to improve their PCE to be competitive in certain applications that involve flexibility and low weight.Īll the numerical simulations are performed by employing Silvaco TCAD device simulator. Consequently, the development of thin-film c-Si solar cells will be a crucial and novel technological trend that can have several profound effects. Further, thin-film c-Si solar cells may be flexible, thereby expanding the variety of their applications. These techniques include using an antireflective coating, as well as applying nano- and micro-structures, including nanowires, nanocones, and textured structures. In order to create extremely effective thin-film c-Si solar cells, it is important to significantly thin the c-Si wafers and use recently discovered light-trapping methods to absorb incident solar radiation in thin-film c-Si devices. Yet, planar c-Si solar cells with a low thickness of 50-μm suffer from a light absorption loss because of the mismatch in the refractive index between the c-Si and the air. These thin-film c-Si cells have the advantage of being extremely cost-competitive and can be fabricated based on the traditional processes of thick c-Si solar cells. Recently, the production of thin-film c-Si cells with lower than 50-μm-thick c-Si wafers has been endeavored. Additionally, the energy band gap of silicon is 1.12 eV, which corresponds to an absorption cut-off wavelength of about 1160 nm. For several decades, silicon solar cells have represented the dominant technology in PV industries thanks to their non-toxic properties. PV technologies provide clean and reliable means to meet the ever-increasing demand for energy. Although the inclusion of ARC results in increasing V ON, it is still lower than the value of V ON for the Schottky diode encountered in current protection technology. Moreover, the simulation results depict that, by the introduction of an antireflection coating (ARC) layer, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) is enhanced and the PCE is boosted to 22.43%. The enhanced cell structure shows an improvement in the short-circuit current density ( J SC) and the open-circuit voltage ( V OC), and thus an increased power conversion efficiency (PCE) while the V ON is increased due to an increase of the J SC. The proposed solar cell is enhanced by optimizing different design parameters, such as the doping concentration and the layers’ thicknesses. Furthermore, enhancement techniques to improve the electrical and optical characteristics of the self-protected device are investigated. The ON-state voltage ( V ON) of the backward equivalent diode is found to be 0.062 V, which is lower than the value for the Schottky diode usually used as a protective element in a string of solar cells. The proposed device achieves two distinct functions where it acts as a regular solar cell at forward bias while it performs as a backward diode upon reverse biasing. To protect the solar cell against the reverse current, we introduce a novel design of a self-protected thin-film crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cell using TCAD simulation. The reverse-biased cells consume power instead of generating it, resulting in hot spots. Current mismatch due to solar cell failure or partial shading of solar panels may cause a reverse biasing of solar cells inside a photovoltaic (PV) module.
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