| The silicon point-contact solar cell is a candidate solar cell for use in highly concentrated sunlight. Recent progress is described for a point-contact solar cell optimized for incident power densities of 36 Watts/cm;The ultimate efficiency of silicon solar cells will be limited by parasitic Auger recombination. With the model, a device is optimized to measure the carrier lifetimes in highly-injected silicon in the carrier density range of interest for solar cell operation, ;Utilizing measurements from several runs of solar cells, a three-dimensional model is compared to the data in order to establish a strong baseline case from which future design enhancements can be evaluated. A modeling study of the optimum geometries for point contact solar cells provides the context for a discussion of the device physics of the solar cell operation. These studies indicate that efficiencies exceeding 30% may soon be attained. |
