Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Funded by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India

With environmental issues at the forefront, efficient solar cells have become extremely important. Unfortunately the efficiency of conventional silicon solar cells has flat lined at around 20%, with little scope for improvement. To achieve higher efficiency, we are investigating silicon/oxide heterojunction solar cells. The primary challenge here is the loss at the Si/oxide interface. Using advanced characterization techniques and interface modification we have demonstrated Si/oxide heterojunctions with 1000x lower interface losses.

Integration of Cu$_2$O with Si: (Left) measured band-alignment between Cu$_2$O and Si using electron spectroscopy. (Right) Improved performance of Cu$_2$O/Si solar cell fabricated at CeNSE vs. previous state-of-the-art, enabled by reducing losses at the Cu$_2$O/Si interface.