Amorphous and nanocrystalline silicon thin film photovoltaic technology on flexible substrates

This paper reviews our thin film silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) technology, including material and device studies as well as roll-to-roll manufacturing on a flexible substrate. Our current thin film silicon PV products are made with hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) and amorphous silicon germanium (a-SiGe:H) alloys. The advantages of a-Si:H-based technology are low cost, capability of large scale manufacturing, abundance of raw materials, and no environmental concerns. One disadvantage of a-Si:H PV technology is lower energy conversion efficiency than solar panels made of crystalline and polycrystalline silicon and compound crystal thin film semiconductors. Significant efforts have been made to improve efficiency. First, a-Si:H and a-SiGe:H material quality has been improved by optimizing deposition conditions, especially using high hydrogen dilution to deposit the amorphous materials close to the amorphous/nanocrystalline transition. Second, cell efficiency has been improved by engineering the device structure, such as bandgap profiling. In order to use the solar spectrum effectively, multijunction structures that incorporate a-SiGe:H in the middle and bottom cells have been used. The authors achieved record high solar cell efficiency with an a-Si:H/a-SiGe:H/a-SiGe:H triple-junction structure. Using the same structure, we fabricated solar laminates on flexible stainless steel coils with roll-to-roll production systems. Our current product has a stable aperture area efficiency of 8.2%. In recent years, hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) has emerged as a potential replacement for the a-SiGe:H bottom cell in multijunction structures. The authors have conducted a great deal of research and development of a-Si:H- and nc-Si:H-based multijunction PV technology. The authors have significantly improved the efficiency of a-Si:H and nc-Si:H multijunction solar cells and modules by optimizing the nc-Si:H material quality and device structure. The authors achieved an initial active-area (∼0.25 cm2) solar cell efficiency of 16.3% using an a-Si:H/a-SiGe:H/nc-Si:H triple-junction structure and an initial aperture-area module (∼400 cm2) efficiency of 12.0% and a stable aperture-area module (∼800 cm2) efficiency of 11.3% using an a-Si:H/nc-Si:H/nc-Si:H triple-junction structure. The authors expect to launch a new a-Si:H/nc-Si:H/nc-Si:H triple-junction product in near future with much higher efficiency than the current product.