Desenvolvimento e comparação de células solares finas com estruturas p+nn+ e n+np+

• Ano de defesa: 2014
• Autor(a) principal: Campos, Rodrigo Carvalho de
• Orientador(a): Moehlecke, Adriano
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia e Tecnologia de Materiais
• Departamento: Faculdade de Engenharia
• País: BR
• Palavras-chave em Português: ENGENHARIA DE MATERIAIS; CÉLULAS SOLARES; SILÍCIO; SISTEMAS FOTOVOLTAICOS; ENERGIA ELÉTRICA
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::ENGENHARIAS
• Link de acesso: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/3265

The main goal of the solar cell industry is to reduce the production costs so that the photovoltaic solar energy can be competitive with other kinds of electricity generation. Currently, many industrial silicon solar cells use p-type wafers and have a thickness of approximately 200 μm. The combination of the use of n-type silicon to obtain higher efficiency devices and thinner wafers can be an alternative for reducing costs. The aim of this work was to develop and evaluate silicon solar cells fabricated in thin wafers of n-type Czochralski-growth monocrystalline solar grade silicon, specifically in the development of the manufacturing process of p+nn+ and n+np+ solar cells. An etching based on 100 g of KOH and 1600 mL of H2O kept at 85 °C was experimentally suited for thinning 200 μm wafers. Seven minutes in the etching were needed for obtaining 135 μm 140 μm thick wafers. The time of the standard texture etch used in the NT-Solar was optimized and the time that produced the lower reflectance was 40 min. By comparing metal pastes of Ag, Ag/Al and Al, we concluded that the latter enabled the manufacture of the more efficient solar cells, with both structures and aluminum metal paste cannot etch-through the TiO2 thin film. This way, the Al paste has to be deposited on the p+ face before the deposition of this film. The firing of the Ag and Al metal pastes were optimized taking into account the firing temperature. The higher average efficiencies were observed when the firing temperature remained in the range of 870 °C a 890 °C. More efficient solar cells fabricated with n+np+ and p+nn+ structures achieved the efficiency of 13.8 % and 13.2 %, respectively. The internal quantum efficiency showed the solar cells presented high surface recombination. By comparing both structures obtained with similar processes, we can conclude that n+np+ is the most suitable to the production of ntype silicon solar cells.