Multijunction photovoltaic cell

Prof. Phd. Eng Bartram William

Prof. Phd, Conf. Eng. Babon Charles

2012

Multi-junction (MJ) solar cells are solar cells with multiple pn junctions made of
different semiconductor materials. Each material's p-n junction will produce electric current in
response to different wavelengths of light. The use of multiple semiconducting materials allows
the absorbance of a broader range of wavelengths, improving the cell's sunlight to electrical
energy conversion efficiency.
Traditional single-junction cells have a maximum theoretical efficiency of 34%. Theoretically, an
infinite number of junctions would have a limiting efficiency of 86.8% under highly concentrated
sunlight.
Currently, the best lab examples of traditional crystalline silicon solar cells have efficiencies
between 20% and 25%, while lab examples of multi-junction cells have demonstrated
performance over 43%. Commercial examples of tandem, two layer, cells are widely available at
30% under one-sun illumination, and improve to around 40% under concentrated sunlight.
However, this efficiency is gained at the cost of increased complexity and manufacturing price.
To date, their higher price and higher price-to-performance ratio have limited their use to special
roles, notably in aerospace where their high power-to-weight ratio is desirable. In terrestrial
applications these solar cells have been suggested for use in concentrated photovoltaics
(CPV),with numerous small test sites around the world.
Tandem fabrication techniques have been used to improve the performance of existing designs.
In particular, the technique can be applied to lower cost thin-film solar cells using amorphous
silicon, as opposed to conventional crystalline silicon, to produce a cell with about 10%
efficiency that is lightweight and flexible. This approach has been used by several commercial
vendors, but these products are currently limited to certain niche roles, like roofing materials.
asics of solar cells

Figure A. Band diagram illustration of the photovoltaic effect. Photons give their energy to electrons in
the depletion or quasi-neutral regions. These move from conduction band to valence band. Depending
on the location, electrons and holes are accelerated by Edrift, which gives generation photocurrent, or by
Escatt, which gives scattering photocurrent.

Traditional photovoltaic cells are commonly composed of doped silicon with metallic contacts
deposited on the top and bottom. The doping is normally applied to a thin layer on the top of the
cell, producing a pn-junction with a particular bandgap energy, Eg.
Photons that hit the top of the solar cell are either reflected or transmitted into the cell.
Transmitted photons have the potential to give their energy h to an electron if h Eg,
generating an electron-hole pair. In the depletion region, the drift electric field Edrift accelerates
both electrons and holes towards their respective n-doped and p-doped regions (up and down,
respectively). The resulting current Ig is called the generated photocurrent. In the quasi-neutral
region, the scattering electric field Escatt accelerates holes (electrons) towards the p-doped
(ndoped) region, which gives a scattering photocurrent Ipscatt (Inscatt). Consequently, due to the
accumulation of charges, a potential V and a photocurrent Iph appear. The expression for this
photocurrent is obtained by adding generation and scattering photocurrents: Iph = Ig + Inscatt +
Ipscatt.
The J-V characteristics (J is current density, i.e. current per unit area) of a solar cell under
illumination are obtained by shifting the J-V characteristics of a diode in the dark downward by
Iph. Since solar cells are designed to supply power and not absorb it, the power P = VIph must be
negative. Hence, the operating point (Vm, Jm) is located in the region where V>0 and Iph<0, and
chosen to maximize the absolute value of the power |P|.
Loss mechanisms

The Shockley-Queisser limit for the efficiency of a single-junction solar cell. It is essentially impossible for
a single-junction solar cell, under unconcentrated sunlight, to have more than ~34% efficiency. A
multijunction cell, however, can exceed that limit.

The theoretical performance of a solar cell was first studied in depth in the 1960s, and is today
known as the ShockleyQueisser limit. The limit describes several loss mechanisms that are
inherent to any solar cell design.

The first are the losses due to blackbody radiation, a loss mechanism that affects any material
object above absolute zero. In the case of solar cells at standard temperature and pressure, this
loss accounts for about 7% of the power. The second is an effect known as "recombination",
where the electrons created by the photoelectric effect meet the electron holes left behind by
previous excitations. In silicon, this accounts for another 10% of the power.
However, the dominant loss mechanism is the inability of a solar cell to extract all of the power
in the photon, and the associated problem that it cannot extract any power at all from certain
photons. This is due to the fact that the electrons must have enough energy to overcome the
bandgap of the material.
If the photon has less energy than the bandgap, it is not collected at all. This is a major
consideration for conventional solar cells, which are not sensitive to most of the infrared
spectrum, although that represents almost half of the power coming from the sun. Conversely,
photons with more energy than the bandgap, say blue light, initially eject an electron to a state
high above the bandgap, but this extra energy is lost through collisions in a process known as
"relaxation". This lost energy turns into heat in the cell, which has the side-effect of further
increasing blackbody losses.
Combining all of these factors, the maximum efficiency for a single-bandgap material, like
conventional silicon cells, is about 34%. That is, 66% of the energy in the sunlight hitting the cell
will be lost. Practical concerns further reduce this, notably reflection off the front surface or the
metal terminals, with modern high-quality cells at about 22%.
Lower, also called narrower, bandgap materials will convert longer wavelength, lower energy
photons. Higher, or wider bandgap materials will convert shorter wavelength, higher energy light
An analysis of the AM1.5 spectrum, shows the best balance is reached at about 1.1 eV, in the
near infrared, which happens to be very close to the natural bandgap in silicon and a number of
other useful semiconductors.
Multi-junction cells
Cells made from multiple materials have multiple bandgaps. So, it will respond to multiple light
wavelengths and some of the energy that would otherwise be lost to relaxation as described
above, can be captured and converted.
For instance, if one had a cell with two bandgaps in it, one tuned to red light and the other to
green, then the extra energy in green, cyan and blue light would be lost only to the bandgap of
the green-sensitive material, while the energy of the red, yellow and orange would be lost only to
the bandgap of the red-sensitive material. Following analysis similar to those performed for
single-bandgap devices, it can be demonstrated that the perfect bandgaps for a two-gap device
are at 1.1 eV and 1.8 eV.
Conveniently, light of a particular wavelength does not interact strongly with materials that are
not a multiple of that wavelength. This means that you can make a multijunction cell by layering

the different materials on top of each other, shortest wavelengths on the "top" and increasing
through the body of the cell. As the photons have to pass through the cell to reach the proper
layer to be absorbed, transparent conductors need to be used to collect the electrons being
generated at each layer.

Figure C. (a) The structure of an MJ solar cell. There are six important types of layers: pn junctions, back
surface field (BSF) layers, window layers, tunnel junctions, anti-reflective coating and metallic contacts.
(b) Graph of spectral irradiance E vs. wavelength over the AM1.5 solar spectrum, together with the
maximum electricity conversion efficiency for every junction as a function of the wavelength.

Producing a tandem cell is not an easy task, largely due to the thinness of the materials and the
difficulties extracting the current between the layers. The easy solution is to use two
mechanically separate thin film solar cells and then wire them together separately outside the
cell. This technique is widely used by amorphous silicon solar cells, Uni-Solar products use three
such layers to reach efficiencies around 9%. Lab examples using more exotic thin-film materials
have demonstrated efficiencies over 30%.
The more difficult solution is the "monolithically integrated" cell, where the cell consists of a
number of layers that are mechanically and electrically connected. These cells are much more
difficult to produce because the electrical characteristics of each layer has to be carefully
matched. In particular, the photocurrent generated in each layer needs to be matched, otherwise
electrons will be absorbed between layers. This limits their construction to certain materials, best
met by the III-V semiconductors.

Structural elements
Metallic contacts

The metallic contacts are low-resistivity electrodes that make contact with the semiconductor
layers. They are often aluminum. This provides an electrical connection to a load or other parts
of a solar cell array. They are usually on two sides of the cell. And are important to be on the
back face so that shadowing on the lighting surface is reduced.
Anti-reflective coating

Anti-reflective (AR) coating is generally composed of several layers in the case of MJ solar cells.
The top AR layer has usually a NaOH surface texturation with several pyramids in order to
increase the transmission coefficient T, the trapping of the light in the material (because photons
cannot easily get out the MJ structure due to pyramids) and therefore, the path length of photons
in the material On the one hand, the thickness of each AR layer is chosen to get destructive
interferences. Therefore, the reflection coefficient R decreases to 1%. In the case of two AR
layers L1 (the top layer, usually SiO 2) and L2 (usually TiO
2),

there must be
to have the same amplitudes for reflected fields and
nL1dL1 = 4min,nL2dL2 = min/4 to have opposite phase for reflected fields. On the other hand, the
thickness of each AR layer is also chosen to minimize the reflectance at wavelengths for which
the photocurrent is the lowest. Consequently, this maximizes JSC by matching currents of the
three subcells. As example, because the current generated by the bottom cell is greater than the

currents generated by the other cells, the thickness of AR layers is adjusted so that the infrared
(IR) transmission (which corresponds to the bottom cell) is degraded while the ultraviolet
transmission (which corresponds to the top cell) is upgraded. Particularly, an AR coating is very
important at low wavelengths because, without it, T would be strongly reduced to 70%.

Prof. Phd. Eng Bartram William

Prof. Phd, Conf. Eng. Babon Charles
Volume 4, 2012, PV Systems Technologies