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NANOMAT-Nanoteknologi og nye materialer

High efficiency Si-based solar cells employing nanostructured layers

Awarded: NOK 1.9 mill.

This proposal addresses key scientific issues associated with increasing the efficiency of high-performance Si-based solar cells. Two main routes will be explored; the first one concerns reduction of surface and interface charge carrier recombination by i ntroducing nano-structured buffer layers of amorphous hydrogenated Si (a-Si:H) or SiC (a-SiC:H). The second one concerns reduction of contact and emitter recombination by utilization of transparent conductive oxides (TCO’s) deposited on Si. Also a combina tion of TCO’s with a-Si:H and a-SiC:H layers will be explored. The efforts are of experimental character involving advanced techniques for thin film deposition, like different versions of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and sol-gel/spin coating, device pr ocessing, characterization and realization of full solar cells on a laboratory scale. Some examples of specific research tasks are (i) deposition of nano-structured a-Si:H and/or a-SiC:H films with sufficient thermal stability to resist any thermal degradation of the passivating properties during subsequent processing steps like contact me tallization, (ii) development of synthesis schemes for adequate precursors to be used in the CVD processes, and (iii) soft deposition of TCO’s to minimize the generation of interfacial defects. Both the research performing partners (UiO and IFE) have excellent and complementary facilities for carrying out the project, and in addition, the project involves international collaboration with leading groups in the photovoltaics field

Funding scheme:

NANOMAT-Nanoteknologi og nye materialer