• Journal of Surface Science and Engineering
• /
• v.51 no.3
• /
• pp.185-190
• /
• 2018

Dopant-free silicon heterojunction solar cells using Transition Metal Oxide(TMO) such as Molybdenum Oxide($MoO_X$) and Vanadium Oxide($V_2O_X$) have been focused on to increase the work function of TMO in order to maximize the work function difference between TMO and n-Si for a high-efficiency solar cell. One another way to increase the work function difference is to control the silicon wafer resistivity. In this paper, dopant-free silicon heterojunction solar cells were fabricated using the wafer with the various resistivity and analyzed to understand the effect of n-Si work function. As a result, it is shown that the high passivation and junction quality when $V_2O_X$ deposited on the wafer with low work function compared to the high work function wafer, inducing the increase of higher collection probability, especially at long wavelength region. the solar cell efficiency of 15.28% was measured in low work function wafer, which is 34% higher value than the high work function solar cells.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.631-640
• /
• 2016

A dual-mode power management for a hybrid-electric UAV with a cruise power of 200W is proposed and empirically verified. The subject vehicle is a low-speed long-endurance UAV powered by a solar cell, a fuel cell, and a battery pack, which operate in the same voltage bounds. These power sources of different operational characteristics can be managed in two different methods: passive management and active management. This study proposes a new power management system named PMS2, which employs a bypass circuit to control the individual power sources. The PMS2 normally operates in active mode, and the bypass circuit converts the system into passive mode when necessary. The output characteristics of the hybrid system with the PMS2 are investigated under simulated failures in the power sources and the conversion of the power management methods. The investigation also provides quantitative comparisons of efficiencies of the system under the two distinct power management modes. In the case of the solar cell, the efficiency difference between the active and the passive management is shown to be 0.34% when the SOC of the battery is between 25-65%. However, if the SOC is out of this given range, i.e. when the SOC is at 90%, using active management displays an improved efficiency of 6.9%. In the case of the fuel cell, the efficiency of 55% is shown for both active and passive managements, indicating negligible differences.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.70-73
• /
• 2017

We investigated n-i-p type single junction hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide solar cells. These cells were without front surface texture or back reflector. Maximum power point efficiency of these cells showed that an optimized device structure is needed to get the best device output. This depends on the thickness and defect density ($N_d$) of the active layer. A typical 10% photovoltaic device conversion efficiency was obtained with a $N_d=8.86{\times}10^{15}cm^{-3}$ defect density and 630 nm active layer thickness. Our investigation suggests a correlation between defect density and active layer thickness to device efficiency. We found that amorphous silicon solar cell efficiency can be improved to well above 10%.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2008.05a
• /
• pp.425-427
• /
• 2008

Active area of dye-sensitized solar cell (DSSC) has an effect on the efficiency of DSSC. As the active area increases, the efficiency goes down in a general way. This is caused by the increase of internal resistance in DSSC. The internal resistances are related to various resistant elements. The charge transfer processes at Pt counter electrode and the sheet resistance of TCO are two of these resistant elements. In this study, we try to divide the active area into several small sections in a large sized cell to reduce these two internal resistant elements. As a result, we find out that the fill factor is increased and then the conversion efficiency is improved as the number of dividing active area into several small sections is increased.

• Transactions of the Society of Information Storage Systems
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.68-73
• /
• 2010

The interest in acquiring high efficiency solar cells has been steadily increasing due to various advantages such as low-cost installation, pollution free and everlasting energy generation. In order to raise the cell efficiency, there has been a lot of effort to develop effective anti-reflection coatings. In this work, the main objective was to investigate the effects of particle size and annealing temperature of silica anti-reflection coatings to maximize the cell efficiency as well as reliability. It was shown that the light transmittance could be increased by a few percent over a certain range of wavelength using the silica coating. Also, the tribological properties of the coating could be improved through the annealing process, which led to better reliability of the coating.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.41-47
• /
• 2014

Extensive investigation on silicon based thin film reveals a wide range of film characteristics, from low optical gap to high optical gap, from amorphous to micro-crystalline silicon etc. Fabrication of single junction, tandem and triple junction solar cell with suitable materials, indicate that fabrication of solar cell of a relatively moderate efficiency is possible with a better light induced stability. Due to these investigations, various competing materials like wide band gap silicon carbide and silicon oxide, low band gap micro-crystalline silicon and silicon germanium etc were also prepared and applied to the solar cells. Such a multi-junction solar cell can be a technologically promising photo-voltaic device, as the external quantum efficiency of such a cell covers a wider spectral range.

• Applied Science and Convergence Technology
• /
• v.23 no.5
• /
• pp.221-239
• /
• 2014

The global demand for energy has been increasing since past decades. Various technologies have been working to find a suitable alternative for the generation of sustainable energy. Photovoltaic technologies for solar energy conversion represent one of the significant routes for the green and renewable energy production. Despite of remarkable improvement in solar cell technologies, the generation of power is still suffering with lower energy conversion efficiency, high production cost, etc. The major problem in improving the PV efficiency is spectral mismatch between the incident solar spectrum and bandgap of a semiconductor material used in solar cell. Luminescent materials such as rare-earth doped phosphor materials having the quantum efficiency higher than unity can be helpful for photovoltaic applications. Quantum cutting phosphors are the most suitable candidates for the generation of two or more low-energy photons for the absorption of every incident high-energy photons. The phosphors which are capable of converting UV photon to visible and near-IR (NIR) photon are studied primarily for photovoltaic applications. In this review, we will survey various near IR quantum cutting phosphors with respective to their synthesis method, energy transfer mechanism, nature of activator, sensitizer and dopant materials incorporation and energy conversion efficiency considering their applications in photovoltaics.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.13 no.6
• /
• pp.1045-1050
• /
• 2009

The current-voltage characteristics of solar cell has been analyzed using MicroTec in this paper. The current-voltage characteristics represents a efficiency of solar cell. The part of metal contact is doped highly, but active region is doped lowly. We have investigated the current-voltage characteristics according to variation of doping concentration from $10^{14}cm^{-3}$ to $10^{17}cm^{-3}$. We has also determined the doping concentration to obtain the maximum efficiency of solar cell, and analyzed this current-voltage characteristics.

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.26 no.6
• /
• pp.647-652
• /
• 2004

A new ionic liquid, 1-vinyl-3-heptylimidazolium iodide (VHpII), was synthesized and applied as a redox electrolyte for dye-sensitized solar cells. The chemical structure of the synthesized VHpII was confirmed using $^1H$ NMR. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that the VHpII was stable for thermal stress of up to $250^{\circ}C$. The energy conversion efficiencies of the VHpII-based dye-sensitized solar cells were investigated in terms of the effect of a lithium iodide addition. A solar cell containing the redox couple of VHpII and iodine showed a conversion efficiency of 2.63% under 1 sun light intensity at AM 1.5. Adding 0.4 M LiI results in a conversion efficiency of 3.63%, which was an improvement of about 40%. The increased conversion efficiency was ascribed to an increase in external quantum efficiency.

• ETRI Journal
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.730-733
• /
• 2013

In this work, buffer layers with various conditions are inserted at an n/i interface in hydrogenated amorphous silicon semitransparent solar cells. It is observed that the performance of a solar cell strongly depends on the arrangement and thickness of the buffer layer. When arranging buffer layers with various bandgaps in ascending order from the intrinsic layer to the n layer, a relatively high open circuit voltage and short circuit current are observed. In addition, the fill factors are improved, owing to an enhanced shunt resistance under every instance of the introduced n/i buffer layers. Among the various conditions during the arrangement of the buffer layers, a reverse V shape of the energy bandgap is found to be the most effective for high efficiency, which also exhibits intermediate transmittance among all samples. This is an inspiring result, enabling an independent control of the conversion efficiency and transmittance.