Industrially feasible all-purpose metal-wrap-through concentrator solar cells

The authors combine a silicon-based metal-wrap-through architecture with a unit cell designed for the purpose of operating under concentrated irradiance, called AP-MWT solar cell. On the illuminated side, the negative polarity is electrically separated by using an emitter window surrounding the perimeter of each unit cell. The final solar cell device consists of an arbitrary number of unit cells with sizes ranging from 1 × 2.25 cm2 up to 14 × 13.5 cm2. The Czochralski based bulk material as well as the manufacturing approach use state-of-the-art industrially feasible technologies alone. Results show a plateau between concentration factors from 5 to 12 reaching efficiencies above 20.0%. An average efficiency of 19.8±0.15%, for over 150 AP-MWT solar cells measured at a concentration factor of 10, is reported. Details on the interconnection and module design will be discussed in another contribution to this conference.