It is shown that coating graphene-silicon (Gr/Si) Schottky junction based solar cells with graphene oxide (GO) improves the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the cells, while demonstrating unprecedented device stability. The PCE has been shown to be increased to 10.6% (at incident radiation of 100 mW cm(-2)) for the Gr/Si solar cell with an optimal GO coating thickness compared to 3.6% for a...

High-quality III-V multi junction solar cells on Si can be fabricated by surface-activated wafer bonding at room temperature. In this way the formation of lattice-mismatch induced defects in the active solar cell layers can be reduced or completely avoided. In this approach, a 10 μm thin GaInP/GaAs dual junction solar cell is grown lattice-matched on GaAs and transferred to Si by direct wafer b...

Most photovoltaic (solar) cells are made from crystalline silicon (c-Si), which has an indirect band gap. This gives rise to weak absorption of one-third of usable solar photons. Therefore, improved light trapping schemes are needed, particularly for c-Si thin film solar cells. Here, a photonic crystal-based light-trapping approach is analyzed and compared to previous approaches. For a solar ce...

The deposition of a stack of amorphous a-Si:H and microcrystalline c-Si:H tandem thin film silicon solar cells micromorph requires at least twice the time used for a single junction a-Si:H cell. However, micromorph devices have a higher potential efficiency, thanks to the broader absorption spectrum of c-Si:H material. High efficiencies can only be achieved by mitigating the nanocracks in the c...

A range of high performance minority carrier devices have been successfully fabricated on Si “virtual” substrates where threading dislocation densities (TDDs) as low as 1x10 cm are routinely achieved. Minority carrier lifetime data achieved on GaAs-on-Si layers exploiting this novel SiGe buffer approach to monolithic integration (τp = 10.5 ns and τn = 1.7ns) verifies the high III-V material qua...

Electrodeposition of Si films from a Si-containing electrolyte is a cost-effective approach for the manufacturing of solar cells. Proposals relying on fluoride-based molten salts have suffered from low product quality due to difficulties in impurity control. Here we demonstrate the successful electrodeposition of high-quality Si films from a CaCl2 -based molten salt. Soluble SiIV -O anions gene...

The lifetime degradation induced by light illumination or carrier injection which is observed in Czochralski-grown silicon (Cz-Si) leads to a significant decrease of solar cell efficiency. In this paper, realistic simulations of industrial type solar cells are performed by a simple empirical expression describing bulk lifetime as a function of the doping concentration. The optimal doping concen...

Dielectric gratings are a promising method of achieving light trapping for thin crystalline silicon solar cells. In this paper, we systematically examine the potential performance of thin silicon solar cells with either silicon (Si) or titanium dioxide (TiO2) gratings using numerical simulations. The square pyramid structure with silicon nitride coating provides the best light trapping among al...