Power change in amorphous silicon technology by low temperature annealing

Author(s)
Ankit Mittal, Marcus Rennhofer, Angelika Dangel, Viktor Schlosser
Abstract

Amorphous silicon (a-Si) is one of the best established thin-film solar-cell technologies. Despite its long history of research, it still has many critical issues because of its defect rich material and its susceptibility to degrade under light also called as Staebler-Wronski effect (SWE). This leads to an increase in the defect density of a-Si, but as a metastable effect it can be completely healed at temperatures above 170 °C. Our study is focused on investigating the behavior of annealing of different a-Si modules under low temperature conditions below 80 °C indicated by successive change of module power. These conditions reflect the environmental temperature impact of the modules in the field, or integrated in buildings as well. The power changes were followed by STC power rating and investigation of module-power evolution under low irradiance conditions at 50 W/m2. Our samples were recovered close to their initial state of power, reaching as high as 99% from its degraded value. This shows the influence of low temperature annealing and light on metastable module behavior in a-Si thin-film modules.

Organisation(s)
Electronic Properties of Materials
External organisation(s)
Austrian Institute of Technology
Journal
EPJ Photovoltaics
Volume
6
No. of pages
7
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjpv/2015007
Publication date
2015
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103018 Materials physics
Keywords
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Condensed Matter Physics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/b4d06418-9952-4948-9208-b9605363a59e