KEYWORDS: Solar cells, Gallium arsenide, Scanning electron microscopy, Temperature metrology, Image processing, Infrared cameras, Atomic force microscopy, 3D modeling, Electron microscopes, Atomic force microscope
This article summarizes a measurement of gallium arsenide (GaAs) solar cells during their thermal processing. These solar cells compared to standard silicon cells have better efficiency and high thermal stability. However, their use is partly limited due to high acquisition costs. For these reasons, GaAs cells are deployed only in the most demanding applications where their features are needed, such as space applications. In this work, GaAs solar cells were studied in a high temperature range within 30-650 °C where their functionality and changes in surface topology were monitored. These changes were recorded using an electron microscope which determined the position of the defects; using an atomic force microscope we determined the roughness of the surface and an infrared camera that showed us the thermal radiated places of the defected parts of the cell. The electrical characteristics of the cells during processing were determined by its current-voltage characteristics. Despite the occurrence of subtle changes on the solar cell with newly created surface features after 300 °C thermal processing, its current-voltage characteristic remained without a significant change.
KEYWORDS: Solar cells, Photovoltaics, Silicon, Thin films, Copper indium gallium selenide, Thin film solar cells, Crystals, Thermography, Scanning electron microscopy, Crystalline solar cells
The search for alternative sources of renewable energy, including novel photovoltaics structures, is one of the principal tasks of 21th century development. In the field of photovoltaics there are three generations of solar cells of different structures going from monocrystalline silicon through thin-films to hybrid and organic cells, moreover using nanostructure details. Due to the diversity of these structures, their complex study requires the multiscale interpretations which common core includes an integrated approach bridging not only the length scales from macroscale to the atomistic, but also multispectral investigation under different working temperatures. The multiscale study is generally applied to theoretical aspects, but is also applied to experimental characterization. We investigate multiscale aspects of electrical, optical and thermal properties of solar cells under illumination and in dark conditions when an external bias is applied. We present the results of a research of the micron and sub-micron defects in a crystalline solar cell structure utilizing scanning probe microscopy and electric noise measurement.
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