5 Main Energy Losses In Solar Cells
Insufficient Photon Absorption
One major limiting problem of today's solar cells is due to insufficient photon absorption. Conventional Si-based solar cells usually capable of converting roughly 15-20% the sunlight received into electricity. The remainder (approximately 80 to 85%) is lost mostly by unabsorbed photons.
Material Innovations on the Horizon
One way of solving this issue is through use of perovskites, a kind of advanced materials. In a laboratory setting, efficiency levels of perovskite solar cells have been reported to exceed 25%. At a basic materials-coding level, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) makes even perovskite cells capable of 29.15 % efficiency by styling the compound structures to allow them to better align or inherent properties with a solar spectrum.
Surface Texturing Techniques
Surface texturing is alternate method for increasing photon adsorption. The reflectance loses can be drastically reduced by having micro and nano scale structures on the cell surface. For instance, an MIT team of researchers have used micro-pyramids on silicon cells: by combining them to the silicon, they encountered a rise in absorption efficiency by 40%. The texturing causes light to bounce into the cell and get absorbed, preventing more photons from getting reflected.
Anti-Reflective Coatings
Introduction:Anti-reflective coatings (ARCs) are often applied to minimize reflection losses. One-layer ARCs, such as silica, can lower reflection to below 5%. These structures A multi-layer structure (e.g., combining SiO2 with titanium dioxide -TiO2) in turn broadens the range of the solar spectrum, increasing absorption. Apparently, these coatings can improve overall efficiency by approximately 3 to 5 percent, according to research.
Tandem Solar Cells
One attractive technology is the tandem solar cell, which is made by stacking different photovoltaic materials on top of each other to capture more of the solar spectrum. Perovskite on top of silicon layers can achieve efficiencies exceeding 30 per cent. One study conducted by the NREL, for example, showed tandem cells exceeding 29% efficiency in the lab, thereby offering to almost eliminate the losses from insufficient photon absorption.
Real-World Application
Industry is working to make commercial perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells possible to develop at OXFORD PV or other companies. Tandem cells are the most efficient solar cells on the market, with Oxford PV's devices boasting 29%-plus efficiency. Compared to traditional silicon, these cells are designed to absorb more photons and reduce losses, potentially providing a more efficient way of creating energy from sunlight.
Carrier Recombination
Carrier recombination is an important mechanism that limits the efficiency of solar cells by quenching the number of charge carriers available to electric current. Carrier recombination causes attenuation in energy loss of 10-20% in silicon-based solar cells.
Types of Recombination
Linear (SRH) and non-linear with other charge carrier(s) recombination pathways consist of auger and bi-molecular recombination paths, respectively. Although in silicon solar cells radiative loss is not that much important but in direct bandgap materials like gallium arsenide (GaAs) radiative recombination is a real issue going to the limitation of the material limit.
In silicions cells, the SRH recombination, which is induced by defects and impurities, plays an important role. It is reported that the number of SRH recombination centers can be lowered by using less impure and defective silicon of better quality [32]. It takes place at high carrier densities and is mostly important in the heavily doped regions of the cell.
Carrier Recombination Mitigation
One of the most important ways to mitigate recombination is through passivation layers. Surface Passivation : Silicon nitride (Si3N4), Aluminum oxide (Al2O3) is most commonly used. These layers reduce the number of recombination site in the cell surface. 8 For example, introducing a Al2O3 layer can lower surface recombination velocities to < 10 cm/s and improve cell efficiency tremendously.
Hydrogen Passivation is one of the advanced techniques to neutralize defects within the silicon lattice. Here, hydrogen atoms are incorporated into the silicon, they saturate defect sites and make them inactive. Passivation using hydrogen is a technique that has been used in companies like SunPower, with the technology having resulted in cell efficiencies of more than 22%.
Real-World Application
SunPower's Maxeon solar cells utilize advanced passivation and hydrogenation methods that enabled them to reach efficiencies in excess of 22% at the cell level. These cells have a contact on the rear of the cell but no metal contacts on the front, which both reduces recombination and increases light absorption.
A second case is the Panasonic HIT (Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer) solar cells. These cells make clever use of a crystalline silicon cell design, with layers of thin amorphous silicon laid on top to greatly minimize surface recombination. Because Panasonic's HIT cells have been seeing efficiencies as high as 24 percent, which is partly down to the minimization of carrier recombination.
Measurement and Formalization
Measuring recombination rates accurately is therefore fundamental for better solar cell making. Recombination is characterized by photoluminescence (PL)32, EL. PL imaging reveals recombination activity across the cell surface and is used to identify high-defect regions.
Lifetime measurement techniques, such as quasi-steady-state photoconductance (QSSPC), yield lifetime data that is directly related to recombination rates. Carrier lifetimes on the other hand, are much longer in the better cells indicating less recombination and higher predicted cell efficiencies. The Fraunhofer Institute researchers have actually developed silicon cells with carrier lifetimes of longer than 1 millisecond--those are the lifetimes that can drive efficiencies well above 20%.
Ohmic Losses
Solar cells have Ohmic losses due to the inherent resistance provided by the materials and electrical contacts. These losses typically diminish solar cell performance by 2-5%. Many of us rely on natural sources and other ways of renewable energy, like solar panels, for electricity but need to address the inevitable loss of carrying charge when the sun isn't shining.Sources of Ohmic Losses
The solar cell loses energy to Ohmic losses in the bulk material, the metal contacts, and between different materials. Contact resistance at the Metal Semiconductor junction, coupled with the series resistance within the bulk semiconductor material are the primary sources of RC delay. Silicon solar cells : The contact resistance can contribute up to 50% of total ohmic losses in Si (both conventional and PERC) -based solar cells,Reducing Ohmic Losses
A common way to minimize ohmic losses, is to ensure that the metal contacts are well designed and optimized for the material in use. The use of silver gridline on the surface of silicon cells is universal for reducing resistance carrying high electronic conductivity but for wafer based module manufacture this will now be available in fine silver. Those gridlines should be very thin to not take up much shading, but still thick enough to be a low resistance pathway. With highly sophisticated screen-printing techniques it is possible to control the dimensions of individual gridlines. For example, the decrease in these gridlines from 100 um to 30 um could reduce shading losses by about 50%, just as dropping overall ohmic losses.Real-World Applications
SunPower's Maxeon cells are an example of significant ohmic loss reduction via a more advanced contact design. To keep the shading to a minimum, these cells are back-contact and there are no front metal contacts. Back Contact solution i s a simple way to approach that reduc es all resistive losses and increase the overall cell efficiency above 22%. In another example, conductive adhesives as well as electroplating techniques are used for manufacturing solar cells. Conductive adhesives lower the contact resistance between the metal grid and the silicon wafer. However, unlike these techniques, electroplating easily forms a thin, solid, high-conductivity metal layer, which could reduce resistive losses further.Analysis QuotesMeasure and Characterization
The accurate measurement of ohmic losses is also critical for the development and assessment of solar cell designs. Resistive losses characterization in solar cells is made using methods like four-point probe measurements and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The sheet resistance is measured using four-point probe method of the semiconductor material. In this method, four probes are placed at four corners on the cell surface, and the current is passed through the outer 2-probes, while the voltage drop between two inner probes are measured. The resistance here is calculated from voltage and current measurements and reveals information about the ohmic losses characteristic of the inside of the cell.Heat Losses
Solar cells work by converting the energy from sunlight into electricity. The efficiency of solar cells is hurt by heat losses. In commercial c-Si Solar Cells, the thermal losses can be up to 50-60% of the total energy loss. This occurs when excess energy of absorbed photons is converted to heat and not into electricity.
Mechanism of Heat Losses
Now, photon with energy above the bandgap of silicon (1.1 eV) generates free electron and hole, and the rest of the energy is lost as heat. This process, called thermalization, contributes to heat losses in solar cells. An example for this is photons in solar cells made of silicon, at least in the blue spectrum range, since here some excess energy of the photons can be converted into heat.
Advanced Cell Topologies To Reduce Heat Losses
One method to reduce this heat loss is with the use of multi-junction or tandem solar cells. The cells are piled in several layers of diverse semiconductor materials which have been improved to catch varied parts of the solar spectrum. By preferentially absorbing higher energy photons into bands with very high bandgaps this configuration decreases thermalization.
For instance, the efficiency can be improved dramatically by stacking perovskite on top of silicon layers. Tandem semi-conductor solar cells that reached efficiencies of over 29% were shown to greatly reduce losses due to heat by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) by more closely matching the solar spectrum.
Thermal Management and Cooling Systems
This can also be controlled through an active cooling system. Provided cooling systems like water cooling or air cooling will help the cell t stay within the proper rated range for cell temperatures and this can provide better performance. The cooling system used by the application will absorb the heat produced by a solar panel, so the solar panel temperature will be decreased, which will eventually lead to increasing its efficiency by 10-15%, according to study from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
Moreover, passive cooling techniques such as radiative cooling coatings have also been found to help. They are meant to reflect sunlight and radiate infrared radiation to cool down (credit: Purdue University photo/Kayla Wiles) When added as a film to solar panels, one creation from Stanford noticeably reduce the temperature of these systems by 10°C, significantly increasing its overall efficiency.
Real-World Applications
Its thin-film solar cells are an example of technology that was designed to prevent too much heat loss. Used mostly for its cadmium telluride (CdTe) compound, which has a much larger bandgap than that of silicon, so it loses much less energy in the thermalization process. This compares to around 18% characteristically recorded for First Solar's CdTe cells, which boast better performance in hot climates than traditional silicon cells.
An example would be the utilization of bifacial solar panels, that can absorbity light from both the front and back, thus cutting on the heat buildup being accumulated at the front surface of the panel. A report by Fraunhofer Institute says bifacial panels can provide 11% higher energy yield compared to mono-facial panels as the rear side can capture more diffuse and reflected light, which also helps to better manage thermal loses.
Reflection And Transmission Losses
Reflection and transmission losses in solar cells are due to some fraction of the incident light not being absorbed by the cell and instead reflected off the surface or transmitted through the cell without being converted to electricity. These losses are responsible in untreated solar cells up to 30-35%.
Anti-reflective coatings (ARC)
Anti-Reflective And Suppress Reflectionigration coating is one of the most effective ways to suppress the reflection loss. Single-layer ARCs such as silicon dioxide (SiO2) can bring reflection losses down to <5%. On the other hand, multilayer ARCs involving materials such as SiO2 and titanium dioxide (TiO2) can improve light absorption by spanning a wider range of wavelengths. Studies have shown that multi-layer ARCs can increase global efficiency by 3 to 5 percent.
Surface Texturing
Texturing: such as the micro- and nano-scale surface structures, which are created on the surface of the cell to capture light, thereby minimizing reflection and maximizing absorption. An example would be the use of micro-pyramids in the texturing of silicon wafers, which can increase absorption efficiency by as much as 40%. Study has shown that making textured surfaces can improve the efficiency of cell by increasing light trapping, says researchers at MIT.
Bifacial Solar Cells
Ensure them bifacial solar cells that are designed to capture light from both the front and rear side, which is said to bring down power loss by transmission. These cells are able to capture more ambient as well as reflected light, leading to an increase in energy yield of approximately 11% as compared with conventional monofacial panels. Bifacial panels have been shown to have the capacity to greatly reduce reflection and transmission losses from the back of the panel, allowing it to continue to produce electricity, even when placed over surfaces with high albedo, such as snow or sand, according to research from the Fraunhofer Institute.
Real-World Applications
Panasonic HIT (Heterojunction with Intrinsic Thin layer) solar cells combine a crystalline silicon substrate with an amorphous silicon passivation layer with minimal reflection to deliver incredible efficiency (up to 21.6%). Reflection and transmission losses are efficiently managed by these cells that reach efficiencies of up to 24%
Another common application is to apply textured glass covers to solar panels. Textured glass can consequently scatter the incident light, which promotes photon absorption. Solar panels with this kind of glass has increased the energy yield by 5-7%, reveals a study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Measurement and Optimization
The correct measurement of these reflection and transmission losses is essential for the optimization of solar cell designs. These losses were characterized using techniques such as spectroscopic ellipsometry and integrating sphere measurements. Spectroscopic Ellipsometry gives us the information based on the reflection property by measuring the change in polarization of light as it is reflected from the sample surface. Integrating sphere measurements provide the light that is transmitted and is reflected, therefore a full picture of light absorption in the cell.
The optimization carries out the adjustment of the thickness and material properties of ARCs and surface textures. For example, changing the thickness of SiO2 layers from 70 nm to 100 nm creates a coating that reflects the least light for the full spectral range of sunlight.