Modelling silicon solar cells with up-to-date material parameters

Abstract

Silicon photovoltaic cells are subject to a range of material, optical and electrical influences, which may ultimately affect the device performance. Computer models are widely used to parameterize and simulate these influences; however it is preferable that this software is freely available, with adequate support for Fermi-Dirac statistics, compensated doping, advanced mobility models, Shockley-Read-Hall recombination and intrinsic recombination models. We present an iterative Microsoft Excel-based 1D application which accounts for these factors, simulating the device performance, physical properties, and characterisation results of a solar cell under arbitrary injection. Recent changes to the software expand previous versions of the model for simulating the characterisation of silicon wafers to a true solar cell model. Show more