Abstract:
Various approaches have been developed for reducing the cost of the photoelectricity produced by silicon solar cells (SCs). Of highest priority among these approaches are improvement of the efficiency of the SCs, transition from $p$-Si to $n$-Si, light concentration, and use of bifacial SCs. In the present study, an SC combining all these approaches has been developed. In this SC, transparent conducting oxides serve as antireflection and passivating electrodes in an indium-tin-oxide/$(p^+nn^+)$-Si/indium-fluorine-oxide structure fabricated from Cz-Si with wire contacts (Laminated Grid Cell design). The SC has front/rear efficiencies of 16.5–16.7/15.1–15.3% X (under 1–3 suns). This result is unique because the combination of bifaciality and concentrator operation has no analogs and the SC compares well with the world standard among both bifacial and concentrator SCs.