• Energy Research

ABSTRACTLightweight photovoltaic applications are essential for diversifying the solar energy supply. This opens up vast new scenarios for solar modules and significantly boosts the capacity of renewable energy. To ensure high efficiency and stability of the solar modules, several challenges need to be overcome. Degradation due to elevated temperature and/or humidity is a critical concern for silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar modules. Here, we investigated the stability and degradation mechanism of encapsulated cells with lightweight configurations where the cells are based on three different types of transparent‐conductive oxide (TCO): indium tin oxide (ITO), aluminum‐doped zinc oxide (AZO), and a combination of ITO/AZO/ITO under humid and thermal environmental conditions. A damp heat (DH) test at a temperature of 85°C and relative humidity (RH) of 85% was performed on lightweight modules for 1000 h. Our results show that AZO is the most susceptible to DH degradation. The AZO film was damaged by the combined effects of moisture ingress and delamination of the interconnection foil, resulting in a decrease in the conductivity of the AZO film, leading to a dramatic increase in Rs and a decrease in FF of the modules. Consequently, moisture has a greater chance of percolating through the damaged AZO layer into the a‐Si:H passivation layer, causing passivation degradation, which leads to an increase in recombination, resulting in a decrease in Voc of the modules. In particular, after capping the AZO film with an ITO film, the efficiency loss of the ITO/AZO/ITO module was significantly reduced. This suggests that the ITO film could be a promising protective capping layer for the AZO‐based solar cells.

Perovskite/Silicon (Pero-Si) tandem with silicon heterojunction (SHJ) bottom cells is a promising highly efficient concept, which in the case of mass production will likely rely on the same wafer feedstock as the single junction Si solar cells. The thickness of these wafers is constantly decreasing for economic and sustainability reasons. We forecast that Si bottom cells for mass produced Pero-Si tandems will be based on wafers thinner than 100 μm. In our work we study challenges and opportunities related to this likely wafer thinning for the performance of the SHJ bottom cells operating in Perovskite shadow. We study SHJ cells prepared on 80 μm thick wafers in comparison to the reference cells based on 135 μm thick wafers addressing two issues: passivation and light management. Effects of passivating layer thickness, back reflector and antireflection coating are studied under AM1.5G standard test conditions, attenuated AM1.5G irradiance, and under Perovskite-filtered spectrum. We show that major wafer thickness reduction of 40% turns to only approx. 0.35%abs loss in the bottom cell efficiency. This minor loss can be reduced even further using highly technological ITO/MgF2/Ag back reflector and MgF2 anti-reflection coating. Our work shows that significant potential for Pero-Si tandems is waiting to be explored in the perovskite shadow from the SHJ bottom cell perspective. Solar energy materials & solar cells 270, 112813 - (2024). doi:10.1016/j.solmat.2024.112813 Published by NH, Elsevier, Amsterdam [u.a.]

AbstractWe assess the accuracy of two steady‐state temperature models, namely, Ross and Faiman, in the context of photovoltaics (PV) systems integrated in vehicles. Therefore, we present an analysis of irradiance and temperature data monitored on a PV system on top of a vehicle. Next, we have modeled PV cell temperatures in this PV system, representing onboard vehicle PV systems using the Ross and Faiman model. These models could predict temperatures with a coefficient of determination (R2) in the range of 0.61–0.88 for the Ross model and 0.63–0.93 for the Faiman model. It was observed that the Ross and Faiman model have high errors when instantaneous data are used but become more accurate when averaged to timesteps of greater than 1000–1500 s. The Faiman model's instantaneous response was independent of the variations in the weather conditions, especially wind speed, due to a lack of thermal capacitance term in the model. This study found that the power and energy yield calculations were minimally affected by the errors in temperature predictions. However, a transient model, which includes the thermal mass of the vehicle and PV modules, is necessary for an accurate instantaneous temperature prediction of PV modules in vehicle‐integrated (VIPV) applications.

Solar energy materials & solar cells 282, 113412 (2025). doi:10.1016/j.solmat.2025.113412 Published by NH, Elsevier, Amsterdam [u.a.]

Solar energy materials & solar cells 273, 112953 (2024). doi:10.1016/j.solmat.2024.112953 Published by NH, Elsevier, Amsterdam [u.a.]

AbstractA highly transparent passivating contact (TPC) as front contact for crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells could in principle combine high conductivity, excellent surface passivation and high optical transparency. However, the simultaneous optimization of these features remains challenging. Here, we present a TPC consisting of a silicon-oxide tunnel layer followed by two layers of hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon carbide (nc-SiC:H(n)) deposited at different temperatures and a sputtered indium tin oxide (ITO) layer (c-Si(n)/SiO2/nc-SiC:H(n)/ITO). While the wide band gap of nc-SiC:H(n) ensures high optical transparency, the double layer design enables good passivation and high conductivity translating into an improved short-circuit current density (40.87 mA cm−2), fill factor (80.9%) and efficiency of 23.99 ± 0.29% (certified). Additionally, this contact avoids the need for additional hydrogenation or high-temperature postdeposition annealing steps. We investigate the passivation mechanism and working principle of the TPC and provide a loss analysis based on numerical simulations outlining pathways towards conversion efficiencies of 26%.

We investigated the evolution of the spectrally resolved absorption coefficients of SiC and SiOx materials as well as of their multilayer systems during thermal annealing and hydrogen passivation, with focus on the nature of optically active defects induced during annealing. We propose that both dangling bonds (paramagnetic defects) and strained bonds (non-paramagnetic defects) formed during annealing contribute to the sub-band gap absorption and that the associated defects can be partially removed by hydrogen reincorporation. The difference in the evolution of the absorption spectra for different sample types upon annealing and passivation are linked to the fundamental difference in their atomic structures. The much lower optical band gap and the significantly higher sub-band gap absorption of SiC single layers in the annealed state as compared to SiOx single layers can be traced back to the lower flexibility of the relatively dense 4-fold coordinated atomic structure of the SiC material.

Al-doped zinc oxide (AZO) is a potential candidate to substitute tin-doped indium oxide in silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells due to its low cost and low ecological impact. The AZO, sputtered at room temperature (RT), is of particular interest because of low thermal budget and potential for high throughput production with the well-established industrial methods. In SHJ solar cells, high effective carrier lifetime prerequisite for the high open-circuit voltage is achieved with surface passivation by intrinsic amorphous silicon layers followed by doped silicon layers. The passivation quality may be affected by the subsequent sputtering of an AZO layer especially at RT. In this article, we investigated the influence of the AZO sputtering and postdeposition annealing on the effective carrier lifetime in symmetrical silicon layer stacks with n- or p-type doped silicon layers and solar cell precursors. It has been found that the effective carrier lifetime significantly decreased after AZO sputtering at RT. The detrimental effect of AZO sputtering is substrate temperature dependent and is smaller or even absent at elevated temperatures. However, postdeposition annealing, equivalent to the Ag paste curing, mostly recovered the effective carrier lifetime in the symmetrical stacks as well as in the cell precursors. Finally, an aperture area efficiency of 21.2% has been achieved for the 19 mm × 19 mm SHJ solar cell prepared with room temperature sputtered AZO.