Journal
PROGRESS IN PHOTOVOLTAICS
Volume 24, Issue 1, Pages 122-132Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/pip.2699
Keywords
silicon; lifetime; silicon solar cell; crystal and wafer growth techniques; defects
Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-EE0005314]
- National Science Foundation (NSF)
- DOE under NSF CA [EEC-1041895]
- U.S. DOE [DE-EE000633]
- Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology through the Peabody Visiting Professorship
- Harvard Real Colegio Complutense through a RCC Fellowship
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Silicon wafers comprise approximately 40% of crystalline silicon module cost and represent an area of great technological innovation potential. Paradoxically, unconventional wafer-growth techniques have thus far failed to displace multicrystalline and Czochralski silicon, despite four decades of innovation. One of the shortcomings of most unconventional materials has been a persistent carrier lifetime deficit in comparison to established wafer technologies, which limits the device efficiency potential. In this perspective article, we review a defect-management framework that has proven successful in enabling millisecond lifetimes in kerfless and cast materials. Control of dislocations and slowly diffusing metal point defects during growth, coupled to effective control of fast-diffusing species during cell processing, is critical to enable high cell efficiencies. To accelerate the pace of novel wafer development, we discuss approaches to rapidly evaluate the device efficiency potential of unconventional wafers from injection-dependent lifetime measurements. Copyright (C) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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