Progress of amorphous and nanocrystalline thin film silicon solar cell: a brief review

Abstract

Crystalline-silicon (c-Si) solar cell dominates solar photovoltaic modules (PV) and acquires nearly 80% of total PV market due to its high conversion efficiency. But high production cost for fabrication of crystalline silicon solar cell forcible to think about its alternative substitute. Thin film technology for production amorphous-silicon solar cell for its low cost and ability of large area deposition made it suitable for large scale applications. However production of thin film hydrogenated amorphous-silicon (a-Si:H) solar cell is being commercialized and it takes up nearly 10% of PV market. But in single junction cells initial conversion efficiency cannot raise above 10% and its stabilized efficiency is again degraded by 25% from its initial efficiency. The light induced degradation of amorphous silicon thin film solar cell reduces the efficiency of the cell performance, hindrances large scale commercialization. To achieve the goal of high performance of conversion efficiency people are trying to combine amorphous silicon with its nano-crystalline/micro-crystalline counterpart. Solar cell based on a-Si:H and nc-Si:H have been the subject of interest. Current article is a brief review focuses on the significant advancement of thin film amorphous silicon solar cell technology by incorporating nano-crystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) in single and multi-junction a-Si;H thin film. Hydrogeneted nanocrystalline silicon thin film is composed of amorphous phase with few nanometer size crystalline Si grains. This nano crystalline/microcrstalline form of Si solar cell has been achieved significant performance in the efficiency than the conventional hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cell. Incorporating nano form of si crystallites in amorphous silicon matrix opens up a new hope in solar cell industries. Though there is certain limitations by optimizing the device design and cell parameters researchers expect that nano crystalline thin film silicon solar cell may be the possible substitute of high cost crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cell.