《Potential of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon solar cells》.pdf

Published in Thin Solid Films 451-452, 518-524, 2004 1 which should be used for any reference to this work Potential of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon solar cells a,b, a a,b a ¨ a c a J. Meier *, J. Spitznagel , U. Kroll , C. Bucher , S. Fay , T. Moriarty , A. Shah aInstitut de Microtechnique, CH-2000 Neuchatel, Switzerland b Unaxis SPTec SA, CH-2000 Neuchatel, Switzerland cNational Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401, USA Abstract Low pressure chemical vapour deposition (LP-CVD) ZnO as front transparent conductive oxide (TCO), developed at IMT, has excellent light-trapping properties for a-Si:H p-i-n single-junction and ‘micromorph’ (amorphousymicrocrystalline silicon) tandem solar cells. A stabilized record efficiency of 9.47% has independently been confirmed by NREL for an amorphous silicon single- 2 junction p-i-n cell ( ;1 cm ) deposited on LP-CVD ZnO coated glass. Micromorph tandem cells with an initial efficiency of 12.3% show after light-soaking a stable performance of 10.8%. The monolithic series connection by laser-scribing for module fabrication has been developed at IMT as well, for both amorphous single-junction and micromorph tandem cells in combination 2 with the LP-CVD ZnO technique. Mini-modules (areas between 22 and 24 cm ) with an aperture efficiency of 8.7% in the case of amorphous single-junction p-i-n c