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In wafer-based and thin-film photovoltaic (PV) devices, the management of light is a crucial aspect of optimization since trapping sunlight in active parts of PV devices is essential for efficient energy conversions. Optical modeling and simulation enable efficient analysis and optimization of the optical situation in optoelectronic and PV devices.
The authors describe applications of PV Optics to analyze the behavior of a metallic back-reflector on an a-Si solar cell. The calculated results from PV Optics agree well with the measured data on solar cells. Several unexpected results obtained from these calculations are qualitatively explained.
A brief description of the capabilities of PV Optics, a software package for the design and analysis of solar cells and modules, is given. Some specific applications of the software for the design of thick- and thin-film cells are given.
The fabrication of solar cells is a multi-stage process giving rise to a multitude of combinations of materials and cell parameters such as thickness, thin film growth conditions, ordering of layers and tandem cells. Experimentally investigating these combinations to optimize cell performance is expensive and time consuming. Computer simulations of the optical and electrical functions allow for eliminating large class of ineffective combinations and containing the parameter space significantly. We modeled solar cell as a stack of layers. The wavelength dependent dielectric permittivity function defines the capacity of a material to absorb, reflect and transmit incident light. The light travels from one medium to another following simple principles and laws of reflection and refraction. Three important phenomena namely reflection, absorption and transmission take place at the interface of two layers in the cell structure. A coherent treatment of these phenomena using the incoming and outgoing and reflected electric field in each layer can be done. This approach yields the electric field at any point in each layer thereby helping in calculating the absorbed photons in the layer eventually allowing us to calculate the quantum efficiency (Q.E.) and overall reflectance (R) and transmittance (T) of the solar cell. The Q.E. allows the calculation of the short circuit current generated by the solar cell and the R and T allow for the calculation of the reflection loss of the solar cell. The analytical tool used in this thesis is based on such an approach and is used to evaluate the compatibility of the different materials with each other for being used in the solar cell. We used different combinations of Transparent Conductive Oxides (TCOs') for the solar cells analyzed in the work. The major focus of the thesis is to evaluate the dependence of the optical performance of the solar cell on the thickness of the layers of the solar cell along with different TCOs'. The solar cells considered in the work are Copper-Indium-Diselenide (CuInSe2) and Copper-Indium-Gallium-Diselenide (CIGS, CuInGaSe2). The analysis of CuInSe2 and CuInGaSe2 showed that maximum current is produced when Indium - doped tin oxide (ITO) is used as TCO. The use of ITO as TCO results in highest short circuit current density for both the structures. The combination of Zinc Oxide (ZnO) and Aluminium-doped-Zinc Oxide (ZnO:Al) leads to lowest short circuit current density and highest reflection loss. The use of CuInSe2 produces a high current compared to CuInGaSe2.
Three dimensional (3D) optical geometries are becoming more common in the literature and lexicon of solar cells. Three Dimensional Solar Cells Based on Optical Confinement Geometries describes and reveals the basic operational nuances of 3D photovoltaics using three standard tools: Equivalent Circuit Models, Ray Tracing Optics in the Cavity, and Absorber Spectral Response. These tools aide in understanding experimental absorption profile and device parameters including Jsc, Voc, Fill Factor, and EQE. These methods also apply to individual optical confinement geometry device, integrated optical confinement geometry device, and hybrid optical confinement geometry device. Additionally, this book discusses the importance of these methods in achieving the goal of high efficiency solar cells and suggests a possible application in large-scale photovoltaics business, like solar farms.
In wafer-based and thin-film photovoltaic (PV) devices, the management of light is a crucial aspect of optimization since trapping sunlight in active parts of PV devices is essential for efficient energy conversions. Optical modeling and simulation enable efficient analysis and optimization of the optical situation in optoelectronic and PV devices.
Organic photovoltaic devices consist of several thin layers of material with different electro-optical porperties. Since the conversion of incident photons to charge carriers occurs only in the active layers, the intensity distribution of light within the device has an important effect on the efficiency of a solar cell. The intensity in turn depends upon properties of the layers, such as refractive index, absorption coefficient, and thickness, as well as on properties of the incident light, such as angle of incidence and spectral distribution. In this work, we investigate the absorption of light in thin-film organic solar cells with computational methods. Since interference effects play an important role in thin-films, we implement a transfer matrix method to calculate the complex amplitude of the electric field at the interfaces and propagate the electromagnetic wave within layers. We apply the method to conjugated polymer/fullerene bilayer solar cells and investigate devices of two planar geometries for the relevant part of the solar spectrum and a range of angles of incidence. Our results show that the angle of incidence has a small effect on the distribution of the electric field in the active layers for a wide range of angles. For normal incidence, we confirm that the thickness of one of the layers, the layer adjacent to the metal electrode, has a large effect on the electric field distribution and find that the absorbance of light in the active layers depends strongly on the wavelength of the incident light. A reweighting of the absorbance with the solar irradiance illustrates that optimizing the design of solar cells requires a compromise between materials properties and device geometry.