Study of silicon solar cells performances using the impurity photovoltaic effect

Abstract

In this thesis we study one of the third generation solar cells called impurity photovoltaic effect in order to improve silicon solar cells performances .We investigate numerically the potential of the IPV effect in silicon solar cell doped with sulphur as novel IPV impurity. We study the influence of light trapping and certain impurity parameters like impurity concentration and position in the gap on the silicon solar cell performances. (Short circuit current density Jsc, open circuit voltage Voc, conversion efficiency η and quantum efficiency QE). The results show that the PV parameters of silicon solar cells are drastically reduced when Et is located near the middle of the band gap. We found also that the incorporation of sulphur in the base layer does increase the short circuit current density and efficiency when the carrier is low, especially for sulphur impurity located at 0.18 eV below the conduction band. The IPV effect gives an extension of the infrared response of the solar cell between 800 to about 1300 nm due to the of the sub-band gap absorption mechanism. A good light trapping is very to obtain a high solar cell performances based on the IPV effect.