Advanced Silicon Solar Cell Engineering
Silicon remains the dominant material in the global photovoltaic industry, accounting for the vast majority of installed solar capacity worldwide. Decades of research and industrial development have made silicon solar cells highly reliable, scalable, and cost-effective. Nevertheless, significant opportunities remain to further improve efficiency, reduce energy losses, and develop advanced device structures that push performance toward theoretical limits.
Our research in advanced silicon solar cell engineering focuses on materials optimization, device architecture, surface and interface passivation, and light-management strategies. By combining fundamental studies with practical device fabrication, we aim to develop silicon-based technologies that achieve higher efficiency while maintaining compatibility with large-scale manufacturing.
Fundamentals of Silicon Photovoltaics
Silicon solar cells operate by converting sunlight into electricity through the photovoltaic effect. When photons are absorbed in silicon, electron–hole pairs are generated and separated by an internal electric field, producing electrical current. The efficiency of this process depends on several factors, including optical absorption, carrier lifetime, junction quality, and electrical resistance.
Modern silicon solar cells are already highly optimized, but losses still occur due to recombination of charge carriers, reflection of incident light, and resistive losses in contacts and transport layers. Our work focuses on understanding these loss mechanisms and developing engineering solutions to minimize them.
Surface and Interface Passivation
One of the most critical factors in high-efficiency silicon solar cells is the control of surface recombination. Because silicon wafers are relatively thin, recombination at surfaces and interfaces can significantly reduce device performance.
We investigate advanced passivation materials and deposition techniques designed to reduce defect states and preserve carrier lifetime. These include dielectric thin films, hydrogenation processes, and multilayer structures that combine chemical passivation with field-effect passivation.
Careful control of interface quality is essential not only for improving efficiency but also for enhancing long-term device stability. Our research explores how deposition conditions, thermal treatments, and material composition influence passivation performance.
Advanced Cell Architectures
Recent years have seen the emergence of new silicon solar cell architectures that offer substantial efficiency improvements over conventional designs. These structures often rely on improved passivation, selective contacts, and optimized carrier extraction pathways.
Our group studies advanced device concepts that reduce recombination and resistive losses while maintaining compatibility with industrial fabrication methods. This includes the design of carrier-selective contacts, optimization of emitter and base regions, and the development of novel junction configurations.
We also investigate methods for integrating silicon cells into more complex device structures, including hybrid and tandem configurations, where silicon serves as the bottom cell in multi-junction devices.
Light Management and Optical Engineering
Efficient light absorption is another key requirement for high-performance solar cells. Even small improvements in optical design can lead to measurable gains in energy conversion efficiency.
Our research explores surface texturing, anti-reflection coatings, and photonic structures that enhance light trapping within silicon wafers. By increasing the effective optical path length, these approaches allow thinner wafers to absorb more light, reducing material consumption while maintaining performance.
Optical modeling and simulation play an important role in this work, helping to predict how different surface geometries and coatings influence reflection, transmission, and absorption.
Contact Engineering and Metallization
Electrical contacts are essential for extracting current from solar cells, but they also introduce losses through shading and resistive heating. Optimizing contact design is therefore a key aspect of high-efficiency device engineering.
We study advanced metallization schemes, low-resistance contact materials, and patterning techniques that minimize optical and electrical losses. Selective contacts that allow one type of carrier to pass while blocking the other are of particular interest, as they can significantly improve efficiency by reducing recombination at the contacts.
Reliability and Long-Term Performance
For photovoltaic technologies to be viable in real-world applications, long-term reliability is just as important as initial efficiency. Silicon solar cells are known for their durability, but degradation mechanisms such as light-induced effects, thermal stress, and environmental exposure can still affect performance over time.
Our research includes accelerated aging studies and characterization of degradation pathways to better understand how materials and device structures evolve during operation. These insights help guide the design of more robust and stable solar cells.
Integration with Next-Generation Technologies
While silicon will continue to play a central role in photovoltaics, its full potential is increasingly realized when combined with other materials in tandem devices. Silicon provides a highly efficient and stable platform that can be paired with higher-bandgap materials to capture a broader portion of the solar spectrum.
Our work explores strategies for integrating advanced silicon cells with emerging photovoltaic technologies, ensuring that improvements in silicon engineering remain compatible with future multi-junction systems.
Research Vision
The goal of our research in advanced silicon solar cell engineering is to push device performance closer to fundamental limits while maintaining scalability and industrial relevance. By improving passivation, contact design, optical management, and device architecture, we aim to contribute to the continued evolution of silicon photovoltaics.
Through a combination of experimental investigation, modeling, and device fabrication, our group seeks to develop practical solutions that enable more efficient, reliable, and affordable solar energy technologies.