Photoconversion in the HIT solar cells: Theory vs experiment

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical model for photocurrent in HIT solar cells, incorporating tunneling effects, and validates it with experiments on cells with about 20% efficiency across a wide temperature range.

Contribution

It introduces a new algorithm for calculating HIT cell efficiency considering open-circuit voltage peculiarities and compares theoretical predictions with experimental data.

Findings

Theoretical and experimental results agree well above 200 K.

Open-circuit voltage and power decrease at low temperatures.

Series resistance increase explains low-temperature behavior.

Abstract

We obtain theoretical expressions for the photocurrent in the Heterojunction solar cells with Intrinsic Thin layer (HIT cells). Our calculations take into account tunneling of electrons and holes through wide-bandgap layers of $\alpha$-Si:H or $\alpha$-SiC:H. We introduce the criteria, under which tunneling does not lead to the deterioration of solar cell characteristics, in particular, to the reduction of the short-circuit current and open-circuit voltage. We propose an algorithm to compute the photoconversion efficiency of HIT elements, taking into account the peculiarities of the open-circuit voltage generation, in particular, its rather high values. We test our theoretical predictions against the experimental results. For this, we fabricate HIT elements with the efficiency of about $20\,\%$. We measured the temperature dependence of the short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage, photoconversion power, and fill factor of the current-voltage curve of these elements in a wide temperature range from 80 to 420\,K. In the low-temperature range, the open-circuit voltage and the photoconversion power decrease on cooling. At $T \ge 200$\,K, the theoretical expressions and the experimental curves agree rather well. The behavior of the fill factor and output power at low temperatures is explained by the increase of the series resistance on cooling. We discuss the reasons behind the reduction of the power temperature coefficient in HIT elements. We show that they are related to the low value of the combined surface and volume recombination rate. Finally, we derive a theoretical expression for the HIT element's operation temperature under natural working conditions.