Corso di laurea magistrale in ingenieria elettronica

Relatore: Candidato:
Prof. Felice CRUPI César A. PALACIOS A.
Co-relatrice:
Dott.ssa Noemi GUERRA
Anno academico 2016/2017
• Energy demand is a key
component of the sustainable
energy question.

• As the population increases

and people experience higher
standards of living, the world
energy demand will continue
to increase.
 $

effects of burning
fossil fuels

[http://mcensustainableenergy.pbworks.com/w/page/30058012/Energy%20Demand]
• Renewable energies:

 Eolics
 Hydro
 Solar
 Biomass
 Geotermic no CO2 and other
greenhouse gas emissions.
• geometry of the solar cell
• design of contacts
• doping profiles
• passivation layers

- Complexity is growing
- Experiments are hardly
performed

Modeling and simulation, become

helpful for PV industry:
• aid the solar cell design.
• accelerates the optimization and
reduce the testing costs.
• Working principle of solar cells
 • TCAD simulation of a solar cell
• GaAs has direct bandgap and correspondingly
Nanoelectronics and Microsystems
high absorption coefficient which is ideally Laboratory (NML) - DIMES
suited for thin solar cells

Simulates:
• fabrication
• operation and
• reliability
of semiconductor devices
• Provide guidelines of the 2D numerical simulation of
GaAs solar cells, using Sentaurus TCAD tools
combined with the state-of-the-art of the physical
modeling, to investigate the electrical and optical
characteristics of the cell and optimization of design
parameters.
• Simulation methodology
• Simulation domain and mesh generation

• In electrical simulations, finer meshing refinement near to material interfaces, pn

junctions, and contacts.
• Geometrical simulation parameters
 • Optical results: TMM solver

• Full metallized back

contact (325μm)

• 5μm back contact

 • Optical results: Raytrace solver

• Full metallized back

contact (325μm)

• 5μm back contact

 • Results: effect of the total cell width

• The optimum efficiency (η) and

Fill Factor (FF) are reported at
x=325μm, representing the total
width of the solar cell.

• η becomes constant in the

range of 325-400 μm,
meanwhile the FF keeps
decreasing.
 • Results: effect of the window layer thickness

• Jsc changes according to the

thickness of the FSF layer.
• The optimal Jsc value is obtained
at 0,02 μm and a doping level of
1x1019.
 • Results: base layer thickness

• The best doping level is 2x1017 cm-3 with a base thickness of 2μm.
• η=24,07%
• Electrical results: emitter layer thickness

• Heavily doping levels improves

conductivity.
• Thickness of both, base and
emitter layers should exceed the
inc ide n t p h o t o n ’s a b s o r p t i o n
length.
• Best emitter thickness at x=0.9um.
• η=24.58%
• Optimized results
 • Results: Light J-V Characteristics
• In the transmitance curve we
can see the effect of the
presence of a window layer
(AlGaAs) in the GaAs solar
cell. The light power that
enters the GaAs surface is
more than 80%.
• AlGaAs-GaAs solar cell was studied in the
Nanoelectronics and Microsystems Laboratory based on
TCAD numerical simulations.

• Two metal architectures were investigated:

– a full metallized back contact of 325 μm.
– a smaller back contact of 5μm as a top cell in a tandem solar
cell approach.
• GaAs solar cell, must feature:
– An AlGaAs FSF layer less than 0.5μm thick and
– diffused electrical junction less than 0.5μm deep
to ensure optical absorption losses and minimizes the
surface recombination losses.

• Performance of the simulated GaAs solar cell agrees

with theoretical expectations.
 Grazie per
l'attenzione