Researchers have developed a silicon heterojunction solar cell based on p-type gallium-doped wafers, which they call an efficiency of 22.6% and improved stability.
The solar cell is made of 156.75x156.75 mm p-type wafers doped with gallium.
Picture: Picture: University of New South Wales
A team of scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia and Hevel Solar, a Russian heterojunction solar module manufacturer, have developed a new hydrogenation process that is said to have the potential to increase the stable efficiency of p-type heterojunction (SHJ) Solar cells based on gallium-doped silicon wafers.
The solar industry usually uses n-type phosphorus-doped Cz-Si (Cz-Si) wafers in the production of SHJ cells because they ensure that they are not sensitive to boron-oxygen light-induced degradation (BO LID). With the passage of time, the performance of SHJ battery will be seriously affected.
N-type wafers provide higher stability, but their production costs are currently higher than p-type wafers, which is the mainstream solution for manufacturing PERC cells. This means that the use of p-type wafers may further reduce the cost of heterojunction technology, because wafer costs still account for 40% of the total cost of the battery.
However, in order to compete with n-type devices, p-type heterojunction cells must exhibit improved performance.
"Our advanced hydrogenation technology (AHT) used to solve LID and LeTID in p-type PERC solar cells in mass production can be used in p-type SHJ solar cells to solve BO LID when using boron-doped p-type Cz wafers," Study co-author Brett Hallam told Photovoltaic Magazine. Although in this work gallium-doped and n-type SHJ solar cells are stable and do not require processes to improve stability, “we have shown that these same processes can increase the efficiency of gallium-doped and n-type SHJ solar cells and reduce the absolute value of solar cells. 0.4-0.7%."
The research team stated that the expiration of Shin-Etsu's gallium-doped patent (US6815605B1) encourages the solar industry to adopt p-type gallium-doped Cz-Si wafers and describes it as a potential mainstream solution for the SHJ market segment in the next ten years. ( read more.)
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More articles by Emiliano Bellini
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