Title:	Quantifying & Reducing Edge Losses in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells
Author(s):	S. Janke, E.C. Wang, A.B. Morales-Vilches, T. Henschel, A. Cruz, R. Schlatmann, B. Stannowski, S. Pingel, A. Moldovan
Topic:	Silicon Materials and Cells
Subtopic:	Heterojunction Solar Cells
Event:	36th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition
Session:	2CO.11.2
ISBN:	3-936338-60-4
Price:	0,00 EUR
Document(s):	presentation

Abstract/Summary:

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One key challenge in area upscaling of silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells is understanding and optimizing wafer edge losses. In this contribution, we present results from different masking experiments. We focused on two masking aspects: 1) the variation of the masked TCO area on the cell front and/or rear side and 2) the effects of masking solar cells on IV parameter and photoluminescence (PL) image properties. For the TCO masked we compared 3 different conditions. First results indicate a trade-off with Jsc going down and FF going up for a larger masked area. For the IV and PL tests, we used a set of 4 laser-cut masks to shade the circumferential edge of the cells. The results show that with a masked cell area the influence of edge losses can be reduced, leading to an increase of full area cell efficiency from 22.4% to 23.0%, closing the gap to the bestcertified small area cell (23.5%). Further studies will be conducted in this way, to optimize edge-related processes.