Photocurrent simulation in an n-p-n-p silicon multilayer solar cell

Laboratory of Photovoltaic and Semiconductor Materials (LPMS), ENIT, PO Box 37 Tunis, 1012 Tunis-Belvedere, Tunisia

Corresponding author: Abdellatif.bouzidi@isi.rnu.tn

Received: 5 November 2004
Revised: 17 January 2005
Accepted: 11 February 2005
Published online: 27 April 2005

Abstract

In this work, we simulate and optimize the photocurrent densities in a model of an n-p-n-p type thin film multilayer silicon solar cell for space applications. The incident light penetrates the cell perpendicularly to the junctions. The electrodes tailored inside the structure connect the n-layers together and the p-layers together. The equations giving the photocurrent density produced in each abscissa of the structure was developed. We used Matlab software to simulate and optimize the different parameters of the model. The results of simulation show that the optimized n-p-n-p silicon multilayer solar cell could deliver a photocurrent density of more than 46 mA/cm² under Air Mass 0 (AM0) solar spectrum (solar constant of 1.36 KW/cm²) and that the photocurrent density produced by the n-p-n-p multilayer silicon solar cell is at least 10% higher than the photocurrent density produced by the simple n-p junction solar cell. We also show that the most important components of the total photocurrent densities (94%) is due to the minority carrier collection which happens on both side of the three space charge regions tailored inside the cell.