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Reflectance Improvement by Thermal Annealing of Sputtered Ag/ZnO Back Reflectors in a-Si:H Thin Film Silicon Solar Cells

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2011

Karin Söderström ,
Franz-Josef Haug ,
Céline Pahud ,
Rémi Biron ,
Jordi Escarré ,
Martial Duchamp ,
Rafal Dunin-Borkowski  and
Christophe Ballif
Karin Söderström
Affiliation:
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Microengineering, Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Franz-Josef Haug
Affiliation:
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Microengineering, Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Céline Pahud
Affiliation:
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Microengineering, Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Rémi Biron
Affiliation:
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Microengineering, Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Jordi Escarré
Affiliation:
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Microengineering, Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Martial Duchamp
Affiliation:
Center for Electron Nanoscopy, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark
Rafal Dunin-Borkowski
Affiliation:
Center for Electron Nanoscopy, Technical University of Denmark, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark Institute for Microstructure Research, Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
Christophe Ballif
Affiliation:
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Microengineering, Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
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Abstract

Silver can be used as the back contact and reflector in thin film silicon solar cells. When deposited on textured substrates, silver films often exhibit reduced reflectance due to absorption losses by the excitation of surface plasmon resonances. We show that thermal annealing of the silver back reflector increases its reflectance drastically. The process is performed at low temperature (150°C) to allow the use of plastic sheets such as polyethylene naphthalate and increases the efficiency of single junction amorphous solar cells dramatically. We present the best result obtained on a flexible substrate: a cell with 9.9% initial efficiency and 15.82 mA/cm2 in short circuit current is realized in n-i-p configuration.

Keywords

thin filmtextureabsorption
Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1321: Symposium A – Amorphous and Polycrystalline Thin-Film Silicon Science and Technology , 2011 , mrss11-1321-a11-05
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2011

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References

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