Beauty of science: solar cell distortion

17-12-2013

Researchers at the ESRF’s BM05 beamline have used X-ray diffraction to characterise the structure of a solar cell comprising a layer of silicon in contact with an aluminium backplane.

The complete structure is present on the left, while on the right the aluminium backplane has been removed by etching. The integrated diffracted intensity (image represents a region 1.3 mm × 0.6 mm) shows two completely different lines where the silicon diffracts. Where the aluminium backplane is present (left) there is a lot of distortion induced in the silicon, whereas there is much less distortion where the aluminium back-plane has been removed. The results reveal a correlation between the photovoltaic effi ciency and the lattice distortion of the silicon in contact with the eutectic and aluminium layers. (Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and applications submitted for publication).

This article originally appeared in ESRFnews, December 2013.

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Top image: Image credit: T. Thi et al./ESRF; S. Dubois and N. Enjalbert, CEA-INES.

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