COMPARATIVE STUDY OF A PIN HOMOJUNCTION A-Si:H SOLAR CELL

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) has been widely investigated as a viable material for inexpensive and efficient solar cells. The paper presents a numerical simulation of the output parameters of a PIN a-Si:H solar cell under AM1.5 spectrum. These parameters are the short circuit current (J(sc)), the open circuit voltage (V-oc), the fill factor (FF), the conversion efficiency (eta) and the spectral response (SR). The simulation was performed with SCAPS-1D software version 3.2 developed at ELIS in Belgium by Marc Burgelman et al. The obtained results are in agreement with experiment. In addition, the effect of the intrinsic layer thickness (I) on the output parameters of the cell is also presented. It was found that a intrinsic layer thickness of 0.3 mu m consists the optimum value for the cell efficiency.