Electrodeposition of crystalline silicon films from silicon dioxide for low-cost photovoltaic applications
Name
s41467-019-13065-w.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.14 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
83447f81306f9bf9341d43add7656f10
Author(s)
Sadoway, Donald Robert
Date Issued
December 2019
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Zou, Xingli et al. “Electrodeposition of crystalline silicon films from silicon dioxide for low-cost photovoltaic applications.” Nature Communications, 10, 1 (December 2019): © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Crystalline-silicon solar cells have dominated the photovoltaics market for the past several decades. One of the long standing challenges is the large contribution of silicon wafer cost to the overall module cost. Here, we demonstrate a simple process for making high-purity solar-grade silicon films directly from silicon dioxide via a one-step electrodeposition process in molten salt for possible photovoltaic applications. High-purity silicon films can be deposited with tunable film thickness and doping type by varying the electrodeposition conditions. These electrodeposited silicon films show about 40 to 50% of photocurrent density of a commercial silicon wafer by photoelectrochemical measurements and the highest power conversion efficiency is 3.1% as a solar cell. Compared to the conventional manufacturing process for solar grade silicon wafer production, this approach greatly reduces the capital cost and energy consumption, providing a promising strategy for low-cost silicon solar cells production.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41467-019-13065-W
