Silicon remains the material of choice for photovoltaics because of its abundance, non-toxicity, high and stable cell efficiencies, the maturity of production infrastructure and the deep and widespread level of skill available in relation to silicon devices. Rapidly decreasing module prices mean that area-related balance of systems costs are an increasing proportion of photovoltaic systems price. This places a premium on efficient cells. In recent year. Silicon remains the material of choice for photovoltaics because of its abundance, non-toxicity, high and stable cell efficiencies, the maturity of production infrastructure and the deep and widespread level of skill available in relation to silicon devices. Rapidly decreasing module prices mean that area-related balance of systems costs are an increasing proportion of photovoltaic systems price. This places a premium on efficient cells. In recent years there have been large improvements in mass production of high quality wafers, the ability to handle thin wafers, maintenance of high minority carrier lifetimes, surface passivation, minimisation of optical losses, device characterisation and in other areas. Many of these improvements are viable in mass production. The upper limit of silicon solar cell efficiency is 29%, which is substantially higher than the best laboratory (25%) and large-area commercial (24%), cells. Cell efficiencies above 25% appear to be feasible in both a laboratory and commercial environment. Such a cell will have minimal bulk recombination due to a combination of a thin substrate with a very high minority carrier lifetime; superb surface passivation; small-area electrical contacts consistent with low contact recombination, free carrier absorption and contact resistance; excellent optical control through the use of texturing, antireflection coatings and rear surface reflectors; low edge recombination assisted by the use of thinner wafers, larger cells and edge passivation; and sufficient metal coverage to min. 1.Zhao J, Wang A, Green MA. 24·5% Efficiency silicon PERT cells on MCZ substrates and 24·7% efficiency PERL cells on FZ substrates. Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications 1999; 7:471-4.Google Scholar2.Cousins PJ, Smith DD, Luan HC, Manning J, Dennis TD, Waldhauer A, Wilson KE, Harley G, Mulligan WP. Generation 3: Improved performance at lower cost. Proc. Photovoltaics Specialist Conf., San Diego; 2010, pp. 275-8.Google Scholar3.Smith DD, Cousins PJ, Masad A, Waldhauer A, Westerberg S, Johnson M et. al. Generation III high efficiency lower cost technology: Transition to full scale manufacturing. Proc. 38th IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conf. (PVSC), Austin, Texas; 2012, pp. 001594-001597.Google Scholar4.Green MA, Silicon Solar Cells, Advanced Principles and Practice. Universit. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
