Analysis and simulation of crystalline silicon solar cells

The rapid development of novel solar cell concepts requires an accurate and reliable modeling to obtain a better physical understanding of the solar cells, as well as to reduce the number of time consuming and expensive experimental investigations. In order to get a rough overview about industrially relevant silicon solar cell concepts in production and their efficiency potential an overview over different solar cell architectures is presented at the beginning of the work. For a higher accuracy of the numerical simulations of silicon solar cells, the effect of free carrier absorption is discussed in detail. Also, an advanced method for precise modeling of highly aluminum-doped p+ silicon is presented. By using this method, a detailed analysis on the optimization of n+np+ silicon solar cells with aluminum-alloyed rear p+ emitter for industrial applications is shown. As a high-efficiency approach, lateral conductance effects of locally contacted rear surface passivated p-Si solar cells are investigated. Furthermore, a future orientated solar cell concept, bifacial monocrystalline Si solar cells have been optimized for upconversion applications via numerical simulations