Chapter 1.16: Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells – State-Of-The-Art and Future Developments
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Preprint of Chapter 1.16 “Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells” published in “Comprehensive Renewable Energy" ISBN: 978-0-08-087873-7, 2012 by Elsevier - doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-087872-0.00117-7 Preprint version Final version published as chapter 1.16 in "Comprehensive Renewable Energy", Vol. 1 ISBN: 978-0-08-087873-7, 2012 by Elsevier doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-087872-0.00117-7 Chapter 1.16: Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells – State-of-the-Art and Future Developments S.W. Glunz, R. Preu, D. Biro Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Heidenhofstr. 2, Freiburg, Germany Abstract: Crystalline silicon solar cells have dominated the photovoltaic market since the very beginning in the 1950’s. Silicon is non-toxic and abundantly available in the earth crust, silicon PV modules have shown their long-term stability over decades in practice. The price reduction of silicon modules in the last 30 years can be described very well by a learning factor of 20%, i.e. doubling the cumulated module capacity results in a reduction of module prices by 20%. Production has exploded in the last years, reaching a new record value of more than 20 GWp in 2010. To extend the success story of this photovoltaic working horse, it is important to further bring down the costs. The cost distribution of a crystalline silicon PV module is clearly dominated by material costs, especially by the costs of the silicon wafer. Therefore besides improved production technology, the efficiency of the cells and modules is the main leverage to bring down the costs even more. This chapter describes the state-of-the-art process for silicon solar cells and gives insight into advanced processes and cell designs. 1 Preprint of Chapter 1.16 “Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells” published in “Comprehensive Renewable Energy" ISBN: 978-0-08-087873-7, 2012 by Elsevier - doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-087872-0.00117-7 CONTENT of Chapter 1.16 1 General introduction .......................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Photovoltaic market ................................................................................................... 3 1.2 Historical development of cell efficiency ..................................................................... 4 1.3 Maximum achievable efficiency .................................................................................. 5 2 Current status of silicon solar cell technology ...................................................................... 6 2.1 Basic structure of a silicon solar cell ............................................................................ 6 2.2 Physical structure of industrial silicon solar cell ............................................................ 6 2.3 Process sequence ..................................................................................................... 10 3 Influence of basic parameters ........................................................................................... 16 4 Strategies for improvement .............................................................................................. 19 4.1 Dielectric surface passivation .................................................................................... 19 4.1.1 Influence of surface passivation ............................................................................ 19 4.1.2 Passivation mechanisms of dielectric layers ........................................................... 20 4.1.3 Layers and processes for surface passivation ......................................................... 21 4.2 Metallization ............................................................................................................ 22 4.2.1 Front contacts ...................................................................................................... 22 4.2.2 Back contacts ....................................................................................................... 24 4.3 Bulk properties ......................................................................................................... 24 5 High-efficiency cell structures on p-type silicon ................................................................. 29 5.1 Main approaches for high efficiencies in p-type devices ............................................ 29 5.2 Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell (PERC) .................................................................... 29 5.3 Metal-Wrap Through (MWT) solar cells .................................................................... 31 5.4 MWT-PERC .............................................................................................................. 33 5.5 Emitter Wrap Through (EWT) solar cells .................................................................... 33 6 High-efficiency structures on n-type silicon ....................................................................... 35 6.1 Aluminum-alloyed back junction .............................................................................. 35 6.2 n-type cells with boron-diffused front emitter .......................................................... 36 6.3 Back-contact solar cells with boron-diffused back-junction ....................................... 39 6.4 Hetero-junction solar cells ........................................................................................ 41 6.5 Alternative emitters .................................................................................................. 42 6.5.1 Polysilicon emitters ............................................................................................... 42 6.5.2 Implanted emitter ................................................................................................ 43 7 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 43 8 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 44 9 References ........................................................................................................................ 44 2 Preprint of Chapter 1.16 “Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells” published in “Comprehensive Renewable Energy" ISBN: 978-0-08-087873-7, 2012 by Elsevier - doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-087872-0.00117-7 1. General introduction 1.1 Photovoltaic market Crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) is the working horse of the photovoltaic energy market from their invention in the 1950´s up to today. In the last decade the market share of crystalline silicon PV has always been in the range between 80 to 90% (see blue sections in Fig. 1). 100% 80% 60% 40% Other a-Si 20% CIS CdTe Ribbon c-Si 0% Multi c-Si 00 02 04 05 07 09 10 0 Mono c -Si 1999 20 2001 20 2003 20 20 2006 20 2008 20 2 Fig. 1 Market shares of different photovoltaic technologies. Data based on the yearly market surveys published in Photon International, Aachen Germany, Photon Europe. Crystalline silicon PV can be subdivided in cells made of multicrystalline, monocrystalline and ribbon silicon where multicrystalline plays the most important role closely followed by monocrystalline silicon. This dominance of crystalline silicon PV has historical reasons as i.e. the early invention of this solar cell type and the parallel development of the microelectronic industry; in addition it is based on superior properties of silicon and silicon solar cells: Silicon is an abundant material (about 25% of Earth’s crust). Silicon is non-toxic. This is especially important for a green technology. PV modules with crystalline silicon solar cells are long-term stable outdoors (> 20 years). This is decisive for the cost competitiveness for photovoltaics because currently investment starts to pay back around the 10th year after the initial installation of the PV system. High energy conversion efficiency: A high efficiency reduces system costs and enables installation of high-power systems at sites with limited available space like rooftops. The best commercial silicon solar cells available today exceed 20% efficiency [1]. Considerable potential for further cost reductions: Although there have been returning predictions that silicon PV has reached its cost minimum, the costs went down following a learning curve with a learning rate of 20% [2] (20% cost reduction for doubling the cumulated installed power) which will be extended in the future quite probable. 3 Preprint of Chapter 1.16 “Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells” published in “Comprehensive Renewable Energy" ISBN: 978-0-08-087873-7, 2012 by Elsevier - doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-087872-0.00117-7 1.2 Historical development of cell efficiency In 1941 the first silicon solar cell was reported by Ohl et al. [3]. It featured a melt-grown pn- junction and an energy conversion efficiency of less than 1%. A large progress was then achieved in the early 1950ies where Pearson, Fuller and Chapin in the Bell Laboratories prepared silicon solar cells with a diffused pn-junction. The first cells were fabricated on p-type silicon and reached an efficiency up to around 4.5% [4]. Then they switched to arsenic-doped n-type silicon with a boron-doped emitter [5]. This increased efficiency to a value of more than 6%. The first application for these “solar batteries” was the power supply of satellites. It won the competition against other power supplies as chemical batteries [6]. The space race was of national interest for Americans and Soviets during the cold war and solar cells played an important technical role.