3.
1 INTRODUCTION
Semiconductor solar cells are fundamentally quite simple
devices. Semiconductors have the capacity to absorb light and
to deliver a portion of the energy of the absorbed photons to
carriers of electrical current – electrons and holes. A
semiconductor diode separates and collects the carriers and
conducts the generated electrical current preferentially in a
specific direction.
Construction: The solar cell is simply a semiconductor diode
that has been carefully designed and constructed to efficiently
absorb and convert light energy from the sun into electrical
energy. A simple conventional solar cell structure is depicted in
Figure 3.1. The semiconductor diode is fashioned when an n-
type semiconductor and a p-type semiconductor are brought
together to form a metallurgical junction. This is typically
achieved through diffusion or implantation of specific impurities
(dopants) or via a deposition process.
Figure 3.1 A schematic of a simple conventional solar cell. Creation of electron–
hole pairs, e-and h+, respectively, is depicted
A metallic grid forms one of the electrical contacts of the diode.
Another contact is the metallic layer on the back.
An antireflective layer between the grid lines increases the
amount of light transmitted to the semiconductor.
Operation: Sunlight is incident on the front of the solar cell. The
photons of light collide with electrons and produce hoe-
electron pairs. These hole-electrons are separated by the
electric field of the depletion layer of the cell and develop the
electric current.
Only photons with sufficient energy, h, to create an electron–
hole pair, that is, those with energy greater than the
semiconductor band gap (EG), will contribute to the energy
conversion process. Thus, the spectral nature of sunlight is an
important consideration in the design of efficient solar cells.
3.4.5 Solar Cell I –V Characteristics
Equation (3.130) is a general expression for the current produced by a
solar cell.
where ISC is the short-circuit current and is the sum of the contributions from
each of the three regions: the n-type region (ISCN), the depletion region (ISCD
= AJD), and the p-type region (ISCP )
ISC = ISCN + ISCD + ISCP (3.119)
Io1 is the dark saturation current due to recombination in the quasi-neutral
regions,
Io1 = Io1,p + Io1,n (3.126)
Io2 is the dark saturation current due to recombination in the space-charge
region,
The short-circuit current and dark saturation currents depend on the solar cell
structure, material properties, and the operating conditions.
A full understanding of solar cell operation requires detailed examination of these
terms. However, much can be learned about solar cell operation by examining the
basic form of equation (3.130).
From a circuit perspective, it is apparent that a solar cell can be modeled by an
ideal current source (ISC) in parallel with two diodes – one with an ideality factor of
“1” and the other with an ideality factor of “2”, as shown in Figure 3.15.
Figure 3.15 Simple solar cell circuit model. Diode 1 represents the recombination
current in the quasi-neutral regions (eqV /kT ), while diode 2 represents
recombination in the depletion region (eqV /2kT )
Note that the direction of the current source is opposed to the current flow of the
diodes – that is, it serves to forward-bias the diodes.
Figure 3.16 Current–voltage characteristic of the silicon solar cell defined by Table
3.2
The current–voltage (I –V ) characteristic of a typical silicon
solar cell is plotted in Figure 3.16 for the parameter values
given in Table 3.2.
Effective front surface
recombination velocity
For simplicity, the dark current due to the depletion region
(diode 2) has been ignored (a reasonable and common
assumption for a good silicon solar cell, especially at larger
forward biases).
It illustrates several important figures of merit for solar cells –
the short-circuit current, the open-circuit voltage, and the fill
factor.
At small applied voltages, the diode current is negligible and
the current is just the short-circuit current, ISC, as can be seen
when V is set to zero in equation (3.130). When the applied
voltage is high enough so that the diode current
(recombination current) becomes significant, the solar cell
current drops quickly.
At open circuit (I = 0), all the light-generated current, ISC, is flowing through
diode 1, so the open-circuit voltage can be written as
Of particular interest is the point on the I –V curve where the power
produced is at a maximum. This is referred to as the maximum power point
with V = VMP and I = IMP.
As seen in Figure 3.18, this point defines a rectangle whose area, given by
PMP = VMPIMP, is the largest rectangle for any point on the I –V curve.
The maximum power point is found by solving
for V = VMP. The current at the maximum power point, IMP, is then
found by evaluating equation (3.130) at V = VMP.
The rectangle-defined by VOC and ISC provides a convenient
means for characterizing the maximum power point. The fill
factor, FF, is a measure of the squareness of the I –V
characteristic and is always less than one. It is the ratio of the
areas of the two rectangles shown in Figure 3.16 or
An empirical expression for the fill factor is
Arguably, the most important figure of merit for a solar cell is its
power conversion efficiency, , which is defined as
Another important figure of merit is the collection efficiency, which can be
defined relative to both optical and recombination losses as an external
collection efficiency
is the maximum possible photocurrent that would result if all photons with E
> EG( < G = hc/EG) created electron–hole pairs that were collected. The
collection efficiency can also be defined with respect to recombination
losses as the internal collection efficiency
is the light-generated current. This represents what the short-circuit current would
be if every photon that is absorbed is collected and contributes to the short-circuit
current.
Igen = Iinc when there is no grid shadowing, no reflective losses, and the solar cell
has infinite optical thickness.
3.4.6 Properties of Efficient Solar Cells
Using these figures of merit, the properties of a good (efficient) solar cell can be
ascertained.
From equation (3.135), it is clear that an efficient solar cell will have a high
short-circuit current, ISC, a high open-circuit voltage, VOC, and a fill factor, FF, as
close as possible to 1.
In solar cells where the recombination in each region is comparable,
Ao is somewhere in-between.
3.5.4 Temperature Effects: The reverse saturation current Io1
dependents on the intrinsic carrier concentration of semiconductor as
and
An increase in the intrinsic carrier concentration increases the dark
saturation (recombination) current and results in a decrease in the open-
circuit voltage, as can be seen from equation (3.140).
The dark saturation current contains other temperature-dependent
terms (D, , and S), but the temperature dependence of the intrinsic carrier
concentration dominates. The intrinsic carrier concentration is given by
equation (3.157):
The effective masses are generally taken to be weak functions of
temperature. The band gap decreases with temperature and its
temperature dependence is well modeled by
where and are constants specific to each semiconductor.
It is clear that as the temperature increases, ni increases, and thus
recombination increases, and cell performance is impaired. Band gap
narrowing, referred to earlier, is a reduction in band gap due to high
doping and also serves to increase ni and impair solar cell performance.
The open-circuit voltage expression, equation (3.140), can be rearranged
and the temperature dependence explicitly included to give
where B is a temperature-independent constant and T e-EG(0)/kT accounts
for the temperature dependence of the saturation current. The short-circuit
current is relatively unaffected by temperature under typical operating
conditions, so by differentiating with respect to T , the temperature
dependence of the open-circuit voltage can be expressed as
which for silicon at 300 K corresponds to about -2.3 mV/C. Equation
(3.159) can be rearranged as follows:
VOC varies roughly linearly and inversely with temperature and an
extrapolation of VOC to T = 0 is approximately the band gap.
The short-circuit current and dark saturation currents depend on the solar cell
structure, material properties, and the operating conditions.
A full understanding of solar cell operation requires detailed examination of these
terms. However, much can be learned about solar cell operation by examining the
basic form of equation (3.130).
From a circuit perspective, it is apparent that a solar cell can be modeled by an
ideal current source (ISC) in parallel with two diodes – one with an ideality factor of
“1” and the other with an ideality factor of “2”, as shown in Figure 3.15.
Figure 3.15 Simple solar cell circuit model. Diode 1 represents the recombination
current in the quasi-neutral regions (eqV /kT ), while diode 2 represents
recombination in the depletion region (eqV /2kT )
The short-circuit current and dark saturation currents depend on the solar cell
structure, material properties, and the operating conditions.
A full understanding of solar cell operation requires detailed examination of these
terms. However, much can be learned about solar cell operation by examining the
basic form of equation (3.130).
From a circuit perspective, it is apparent that a solar cell can be modeled by an
ideal current source (ISC) in parallel with two diodes – one with an ideality factor of
“1” and the other with an ideality factor of “2”, as shown in Figure 3.15.
Figure 3.15 Simple solar cell circuit model. Diode 1 represents the recombination
current in the quasi-neutral regions (eqV /kT ), while diode 2 represents
recombination in the depletion region (eqV /2kT )