Crystalline Silicon and CDZNTE Tandem Junction Solar Cells

B Gayathri¹, N Usha Rani², G Sunitha³

¹Associate professor, ^2,3Assistant Professor, Department of S&H, TKR Engineering College, Hyderabad, India

Abstract

A photovoltaic tandem system consisting of crystalline silicon / cadmium zinc telluride (c–Si / CZT) combines the successful technologies of silicon and cadmium telluride into a single proposal and offers the potential efficiencies up to 46% in theory. However, the highest efficiency made–up c–Si / CZT tandem cell is only 16.8% today. In this paper, we grow a thorough model for single–junction tandem c–Si / CZT PV cells and CZT, which is verified with experimental data. Based on this model, we propose three hypotheses to explain the anomalously low Voc observed in tandem cells: a low–quality tunnel junction, a Schottky barrier, and through–thickness shunting path. We then propose a simple experiment to make a distinction between these hypotheses. After that, we provide a physics–based study of the magnitude of all the loss mechanisms present in the cell and an experimental approach to alleviate each one. Ultimately, we expect that the ideal efficiency of c–Si/CZT tandem cell could reach 34.1%, if all these loss mechanisms were mitigated, and the CZT bandgap were adjusted to 1.8 eV, without requiring any development in bulk or surface recombination rates.

Keywords

• Loss Mechanisms, Tandem Cell, II–IV Materials

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Cite this Article as Follows

B Gayathri, N Usha Rani, G Sunitha. "Crystalline Silicon and CDZNTE Tandem Junction Solar Cells" International Conference on Systems, Science, Control, Communication, Engineering and Technology (2017): 09. Print.