Effects of Temperature and Spectral Irradiance on Performance of Silicon-Based Thin Film Multijunction Solar Cells

Abstract

A numerical study using Analysis of Microelectronic and Photonic Structures (AMPS) device simulator has been carried out to examine how the operating temperature and spectral irradiance affect the behavior of a hydrogenated amorphous silicon/hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (a-Si:H/µc-Si:H) tandem cell. We have proposed a new tunnel-recombination junction (TRJ) model to calculate the characteristics of the tandem cell as a complete single device. We have shown that our new TRJ model is reliable and can be used for the simulation of the tandem cell. From the calculated results, we have observed that the performance of the tandem cell is sensitive to the spectral irradiance distribution. Furthermore, we have also observed that the current matching condition slightly affects the temperature coefficient of the tandem cell. We have considered that a top-limited cell has a lower temperature coefficient than the bottom-limited and current-matched cells.