Silicon solar cells for the application in low concentrator systems-development and characterization

The present dissertation focuses on the development and characterization of industrially feasible, silicon-based low concentrator solar cells that can be manufactured on existing production lines. Both, theoretical and experimental approaches are introduced and discussed. Novel solar cell architectures such as metal-wrap-through as well as conventional designs are presented and specific advantages emphasized. The theoretical work is based on the extension of known expressions for the series resistance and its impact on the open-circuit-voltage. An experimental approach is introduced to extract the local recombination of the metal contacted emitter region. Furthermore, it is shown that the influence of the boron-oxygen complex, known to degrade p-type silicon is reduced for the concentrator application. The work concludes with the introduction of a novel unit cell design based on the metal-wrap-through architecture.