Title:	Simulation of Microcrystalline Thin-Film Silicon Solar Cells with Integrated AFM Scans
Author(s):	C. Jandl, W. Dewald, C. Pflaum, H. Stiebig
Keywords:	Thin Film Solar Cell, FIT Simulation, AFM Scan
Topic:	Thin Film Solar Cells
Subtopic:	Amorphous and Microcrystalline Silicon Solar Cells
Event:	25th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition / 5th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion, 6-10 September 2010, Valencia, Spain
Session:	3AV.2.3
Pages:	3154 - 3157
ISBN:	3-936338-26-4
Paper DOI:	10.4229/25thEUPVSEC2010-3AV.2.3
Price:	0,00 EUR
Document(s):	paper

Abstract/Summary:

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A sophisticated light management is significant for thin-film solar cells based on microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H). The quantum efficiency (QE) and short-circuit current density (JSC) of such solar cells is influenced by the topology of the nano-textured interfaces. It is well-known that the efficiency of solar cells can be increased by a rough transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layer. Manufacturing of solar cells with different rough interfaces is a very time-consuming and expensive process. Therefore, simulations are helpful to calculate the efficiency of solar cells for rough interfaces to find an optimized texture. To this end, a simulation tool is developed to integrate different nanostructures at the interfaces, which can be obtained by atomic force microscope (AFM) scans. The numerical simulations are based on the finite integration technique (FIT) in such a way that AFM scan data can be incorporated. Parallel computation on high performance computers (HPC) are needed to meet the large computational amount requirements.