Modeling the current-voltage characteristics of thin-film silicon solar cells based on photo-induced electron transfer processes

Power conversion efficiency of p-i-n type microcrystalline silicon (c-Si:H) solar cells has been analyzed in terms of sequential processes of photo-induced electron transfer. The effect of the excitonic state on the charged carrier generation has been studied compared to a conventional scheme in which only charged carriers are taken into account for the operation of the solar cells. A numerical model has been developed to calculate current-voltage characteristics of solar cells on the basis of two types of charged carrier generation processes (exciton process and charged carrier process). The light trapping effect due to a textured back surface reflector (BSR) was embedded in the numerical model by using the effective medium theory in combination with the matrix method in the field of the electromagnetic theory of light. As an application of this modeling, it was found that the reported data of the power conversion efficiency were not explained by the conventional charged carrier process model and that the combined model of the charged carrier process with the exciton process well explains the performance of the p-i-n type c-Si:H solar cells. In this way, the typical power conversion efficiencies were estimated to be 10.5% for the device (i-layer thickness: 1.8 m) with the BSR (period: 600 nm; height: 250 nm) and 8.6% for the device with the flat reflector under the condition that the fractions of the exciton process and charged carrier process were 60% and 40%, respectively.