Modeling of Transport Properties of Amorphous Silicon Solar Cells

Abstract

In this report we present the status of three projects; amorphous silicon solar cell characteristics and modeling, hole drift mobility measurements in microcrystalline and amorphous silicon, and hole-conducting polymers as player materials for amorphous and crystal silicon solar cells. The work described herein was actually done on c-Si substrates, and is preliminary to work on a-Si:H based n/i structures. Fairly good c-Si/polyaniline diodes were fabricated; the open-circuit voltage under illumination was about 0.4V. The solar conversion efficiency of as-deposited pin a-Si:H solar cells can be explained surprisingly well from hole mobility and optical absorption measurements on the intrinsic layer material. We first realized this fact about 18 months ago.