Effects of the Contact Resistivity Variations of the Screen-Printed Silicon Solar Cell

Problem statement: Unmatched combination of emitter and base contact resistance will influence the total performance of the solar cell. To optimize this combination, single crystalline silicon solar cell was analyzed using quasi-one-dimensional transport of electrons and holes in crystalline semiconductor, PC1D. Approach: Effects of the resistance of the emitter and base contact have been investigated with a view to find the best resistive combinations. A range of contact resistance of emitter and base were applied to PC1D software for evaluation. Results: The short circuit current Isc, the open circuit voltage Voc, the maximum power Pm and the fill factor are the observed parameters due to the variations of the resistance on the emitter and base contact. As the two variable factors that take into the account, while evaluating one factor, the other was set to constant value. It is found that as the contact resistance goes higher, the values of the parameters deceased. Conclusion/Recommendations: From the evaluation, the lowest emitter resistance that will give highest value of parameter in the selected ranged is 1 mΩ while for the base contact will be 15 mΩ. The overall investigation on single crystalline silicon solar cell base and emitter contact were done, gives potential parametric suggestion that may assist in the fabrication of high efficiency single crystalline silicon solar cells. A different range of resistance variation are suggested for future related investigation.