An improved method of fitting point-by-point is proposed to determine the absorption coefficient from infrared (IR) transmittance. With no necessity of empirical correction factors, the absorption coefficient can be accurately determined for the films with thin thicknesses. Based on this method, the structural properties of the hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide materials (a-SiOx:H) are investigated. The oxygen-concentration-dependent variation of the Si-O-Si and the Si-H related modes in a-SiOx:H materials is discussed in detail.
In this article, a new type of superimposing morphology comprised of a periodic nanostructure and a random structure is proposed for the first time to enhance the light scattering in silicon-based thin film solar cells. According to the framework of the Reyleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction algorithm and the experimental results of random morphologies, we analyze the light-scattering properties of four superimposing morphologies and compare them with the individual morphologies in detail. The results indicate that the superimposing morphology can offer a better light trapping capacity, owing to the coexistence of the random scattering mechanism and the periodic scattering mechanism. Its scattering property will be dominated by the individual nanostructures whose geometrical features play the leading role.
Highly-oriented Cu2O thin films were prepared by low temperature thermal oxidation of evaporated Cu thin films. The films were doped with different doses of nitrogen by ion implantation. An absorption peak ap- pears below the absorption edge in the absorption spectrum of highly nitrogen doped Cu2O. The effect of nitrogen doping on the crystal structure, electronic structure and optical properties of Cu2O were investigated systemati- cally by first-principles calculations. The calculation results indicate that an intermediate energy band exists in the forbidden gap of highly nitrogen doped Cu2O. The electron transition from the valence band to the intermediate band is consistent with the absorption peak by experimental observation. Experimental and computational results indicate that nitrogen doped Cu2O could be a suitable absorbing material candidate for wide-spectrum detectors or intermediate band solar cells.
In this paper, a-Si:H/a-SiGe:H/μc-SiGe:H triple-junction solar cell structure is proposed. By the analyses of mi- croelectronic and photonic structures (AMPS-1D) and our TRJ-F/TRJ-M/TRJ-B tunneling-recombination junction (TRJ) model, the most preferably combined bandgap for this structure is found to be 1.85 eV/1.50 eV/1.0 eV. Using more realistic material properties, optimized thickness combination is investigated. Along this direction, a-Si:H/a-SiGe:H/μc-SiGe:H triple cell with an initial efficiency of 12.09% (Voc = 2.03 V, FF = 0.69, Jsc = 8.63 mA/cm^2, area = 1 cm^2) is achieved in our laboratory.