Modeling and Analysis of Geometry Design of n-Type Interdigitated Back-Contact Silicon Solar Cell

27th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 1296-1298
The interdigitated back contact (IBC) solar cell which is commercialized by Sunpower is known for its outstanding conversion efficiency in silicon-based solar cells. It is now manufactured in AUO SunPower Malaysia in mass production. To further reduce the cost of the cell, it is necessary to keep improving the cell performance to a higher level. The purpose of the work is to improve the cell efficiency by modifying the geometry design of IBC cell with the assistance of the computational simulation. In this study, the impact of the cell geometry design such as the emitter, BSF, undoped gap, contact area and the diffusion pitch will be evaluated through the PC2D simulation [Basore PA, Cabanas-Holmen K IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics 2011;1(1): 72–77]. From the two-dimensional simulation analysis, it is recommended in order to gain higher cell efficiency, larger emitter area, with smaller BSF and adequate undoped gap are preferred for the current IBC cell design. Smaller diffusion pitch and contact area also helps the improvement of fill factor and the efficiency. The simulation results are verified by the experimental splits. From the experimental results, the efficiency of 5” n-type IBC cell is improved from 22.2% to 22.4%. It is consistent with our simulation.