Integrated Process And Device ‘TCAD’ For Enhancement Of C-si Solar Cell Efficiency

When?

Thursday 11 November 2010, 13:00

Where?

02ATI02

Open to:

Staff, Students

Speaker:

Professor Nick Cowern, School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Newcastle

Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) using integrated process and device simulation is widely used in the semiconductor industry to reduce development costs and time, and to enhance device performance. In the PV industry up to now, TCAD has usually been limited to device simulation. This paper shows results of applying integrated TCAD using physics based simulation of process steps to predict the solar cell structure and 2D or 3D device simulation of the resultant cell operation. The approach is applied in detail to the simulation of Laser Grooved Buried Contact (LGBC) cells and initial results are also presented for Emitter Wrap Through and Metal Wrap Through (EWT/MWT) architectures. The use of integrated TCAD enables direct assessment of the impact of changing fabrication steps on key cell parameters such as Voc, jsc, FF and efficiency. Results suggest integrated TCAD will significantly accelerate development of future PV technology processes.