Improved photovoltaic characteristics of amorphous Si thin-film solar cells containing nanostructure silver conductors fabricated using a non-vacuum process

Chung-Yuan Kung; Jun-Chin Liu; Yu-Hung Chen; Chen-Cheng Lin; Hsin-Wei Lu; Yung-Tsung Liu; Chao-Cheng Lin

Improved photovoltaic characteristics of amorphous Si thin-film solar cells containing nanostructure silver conductors fabricated using a non-vacuum process

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Author(s): Chung-Yuan Kung ¹ ; Jun-Chin Liu ^{1, 2} ; Yu-Hung Chen ² ; Chen-Cheng Lin ² ; Hsin-Wei Lu ² ; Yung-Tsung Liu ² ; Chao-Cheng Lin ²
- Affiliations: 1: Department of Electrical Engineering and Graduate Institute of Optoelectronic Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 40227, Taiwan;
  2: Photovoltaic Technology Division, Green Energy and Environment Research Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu 31040, Taiwan
Source: Volume 9, Issue 11, November 2014, p. 757 – 760
DOI: 10.1049/mnl.2014.0416 , Online ISSN 1750-0443

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Received 23/07/2014, Accepted 26/08/2014, Published 30/10/2014

A low-cost, highly reflective, liquid organic nanostructure silver conductor with superior conductivity, using back contact reflectors in amorphous silicon (a-Si) single-junction superstrate configuration thin-ﬁlm solar cells produced using a non-vacuum screen printing process is proposed. The conductive paste is composed of Ag nanowires (Ag NWs) mixed with an Ag nanostructure (Ag NS) sheet. The paste is referred to as ‘Ag NWS’. A comparison of silver conductor samples with vacuum-system-sputtered silver samples indicated that the short-circuit current density (J _sc) and the open-circuit voltage (V _oc) of Ag NWS conductor cells exceeded 0.22 mA/cm² and 66 mV, respectively. The Ag NWS conductor with back contact reflectors in solar cells was analysed using external quantum efficiency measurements to effectively enhance light-trapping ability in a long wavelength region (580–700 nm). The cells constructed using the optimised Ag NWS demonstrated an increase of approximately 6.1% in power conversion efficiency under AM 1.5 illumination. These results indicated that the Ag NWS conductor back contact reflector layer is a suitable candidate for high-performance a-Si thin-film solar cells.

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Improved photovoltaic characteristics of amorphous Si thin-film solar cells containing nanostructure silver conductors fabricated using a non-vacuum process

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