PercIGS · PercIGS

To a large extent, the latest CIGS improvement is due to enhancements in the semiconductor material quality. However, as the material quality of the semiconductors improves, other parts of the solar cell are becoming the new bottlenecks to increase the efficiency further towards the theoretical limit for non-concentrated light, which is 30 %.Therefore, this project is focused on an advanced, yet industrially feasible, device structure: The introduction of point contacts and a passivation layer will be used to reduce the back contact recombination and thus enhance efficiency. The application focuses towards CIGS based solar cells, but the concept can be generalized to other high quality thin film solar cell technologies as well. The project is structured in four sub-projects, of which the motivations are described below.Specific goals:•An innovative concept to reduce the high recombination back contact surface area will be developed. This will drastically reduce the recombination rate at the back contact for state of the art CIGS solar cells•Increase of solar cell efficiency by up to 1.5 absolute percent by increasing photo-generated voltage and current.•The concept will also be used as a powerful tool to investigate the influence of grain boundaries in the polycrystalline CIGS semiconductor material.The project has four main objectives: (1) point contact development, (2) assessment of passivation layers, (3) application in solar cell devices, and (4) a CIGS material study.A successful outcome will advance the current state-of-the-art in CIGS research, through:•New methods to develop nano-sized contacting points•Novel (rear) passivation layers for CIGS material•An advanced device structure to increase CIGS solar cell efficiency•Improved understanding of the influence of grain boundaries on charge transport in CIGS material