A study of multilayer solar cells performances using gallium arsenide (gaAs) and silicon (Si)
The present low efficiency of solar cells is due to the incomplete use of the solar spectrum. Since different semiconductor materials have different band gaps, it responds separately to different parts of the solar spectrum and therefore, it is possible to put several layers in a series. The multila...
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| Format: | Thesis |
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| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dspace.unimap.edu.my:80/xmlui/bitstream/123456789/78344/1/Page%201-24.pdf http://dspace.unimap.edu.my:80/xmlui/bitstream/123456789/78344/2/Full%20text.pdf http://dspace.unimap.edu.my:80/xmlui/bitstream/123456789/78344/3/Suhaila.pdf |
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| Summary: | The present low efficiency of solar cells is due to the incomplete use of the solar spectrum. Since different semiconductor materials have different band gaps, it responds separately to different parts of the solar spectrum and therefore, it is possible to put several layers in a series. The multilayer solar cell has been extensively studied with the hope of improving the good efficiency and low-cost for future trends. A substrate layer which consists of Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and Silicon (Si) will give different characteristic band gap energy, which causes it to absorb light most efficiently at a certain color and more precisely, to absorb electromagnetic radiation over a portion of the spectrum. Since Gallium Phosphide (GaP) is one of the favored material for solar
cell, the GaP semiconductor is chosen to absorb nearly the entire solar spectrum, thus
generating electricity from as much of the solar energy as possible. Improvement of
solar cell efficiency with selected material composition are very important from
economical and technological aspects. The improvements are made to Gallium
Phosphide (GaP) solar cell by introducing doping such as Indium (In) and Aluminium
(Al) into the GaP structure. The results are produced for single layer and dual layer to
observe the effectiveness of the material used and also included the result for multilayer
structure. For single layer, the efficiency of the GaAs solar cell is 11.32 % , 2.13 % for
Silicon and 5.89 % for GaP solar cell. In multilayer InxGa1-xP cells, the highest
efficiency obtained from InxGa1-xP/ GaAs at x=0.7 with the efficiency of 13.23 % and
for InxGa1-xP/ Si, the efficiency obtained is 13.12 % at x=0.7. For AlxGa0.5-xIn0.5P cells,
the highest efficiency obtained from AlxGa0.5-xIn0.5P/ GaAs, which is 36.99 % and for
AlxGa0.5-xIn0.5P/ Si solar cell, the efficiency obtained is 35.63 %, both at x=0.4. As an
improvement, the highest efficiency is 43.42 % for AlxGa0.5-xIn0.5P/ GaAs and 37.11 %
for Alx Ga0.5-xIn0.5P/ Si, at x=0.4 for both by having Anti-Reflective Coating (ARC)
using Zinc Oxide (ZnO) on top of multilayer cells. |
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