Low-cost, highly-efficient Si solar cell : for the 1.4 billion people who do not have access to electricity
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Women in Africa walk more than four miles every day to collect water because they do not have electricity to pump the water in their wells. Villagers in India travel more than ten miles to charge their gadgets such as cell phones. Today, more than 1.4 billion people in the world do not have any access to electricity, and most of them are poor families in remote locations. One viable solution to the world's energy problem is to utilize solar power with inexpensive and efficient photovoltaic systems. Si solar cells, which have no limitation for use in terms of abundance, toxicity, and stability, will be the most attractive solution, but the current Si photovoltaic system still remains more expensive than traditional fossil fuels. In order to be cost-competitive, a Si solar cell needs to be thinner: it can reduce not only the material cost but also the balance-of-system (BOS) cost, because thin and light-weight Si solar cells can be packaged with cheap plastics substrates and can be delivered and installed easily. Thinner material, however, absorbs less amount of light, which requires a smart design for a thin Si solar cell to improve light absorption as much as possible. Nanostructuring, such as nanowires or nanocones, emerges as a promising solution: its absorption improvement can be significantly larger than that from a conventional texturing method. Various nanostructured solar cells, however, have not achieved high power conversion efficiency (PCE). Although their light absorption is much higher than that of a conventional solar cell, their PCE is much lower. This problem is due to the increased Auger and surface recombination in nanostructured solar cells. It is a very critical problem, but it has been overlooked. This dissertation presents two novel design concepts of nanostructured solar cells as solutions to the problem: a hybrid Si nanocone/polymer solar cell and an ultra-thin Si solar cell with an all-back-contact design. Both devices achieved more than 80% external-quantum-efficiency (EQE) over the entire visible spectrum, which demonstrated their success as a solution. Their EQEs are superior to the EQEs of any other nanostructured Si solar cells reported so far. The hybrid Si solar cell showed 11.1% PCE with a simple solution-based process. The ultra-thin Si solar cell showed 13.7% PCE from a sub-10-µm-thick substrate. These achievements were based on three key design principles: no highly-doped layer at the front, less surface area, and higher light absorption. My research for low-cost, highly-efficient Si solar cells show the potential of the nanostructured Si solar cell to be a cost-effective solution to the world's energy problem.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Jeong, Sangmoo |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering. |
| Primary advisor | Cui, Yi, 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Cui, Yi, 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Fan, Shanhui, 1972- |
| Thesis advisor | Saraswat, Krishna |
| Advisor | Fan, Shanhui, 1972- |
| Advisor | Saraswat, Krishna |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sangmoo Jeong. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Sang Moo Jeong
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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