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Crystals
Special Issues
Silicon and Graphene Based Materials and Related Devices
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Silicon and Graphene Based Materials and Related Devices

A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352). This special issue belongs to the section "Inorganic Crystalline Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 9462

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Haider Ali

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA
Interests: silicon; solar cells; recombination; wafer cleaning; heterojunctions; carrier-selective contacts (CSCs); contact resistivity
Dr. Shahzada Qamar Hussain

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, Pakistan
Interests: light trapping; transparent conductive oxide; thin film solar cells; silicon heterojunction solar cells; carrier-selective contacts solar cells
Dr. Archana Sinha

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA
Interests: silicon photovoltaics; cell and module degradation; accelerated testing; material characterization; encapsulants; reliability
Dr. Michelle Vaqueiro Contreras

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
University of New South Wales, Australia
Interests: silicon photovoltaics; semiconductors; graphene; characterization; defects
Dr. Anamaria Moldovan

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Freiburg, Germany
Interests: silicon solar cells; selective passivated contacts (HJT, TOPCon); surface and interface structuring; conditioning and characterization; thin film analysis
Dr. Hisham Nasser

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
GÜNAM, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
Interests: passivating contacts; silicon heterojunctions; metal oxides; light trapping; ALD

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Silicon-based solar cell devices and modules currently occupy a lion’s share of the PV market, and it has been forecasted that this trend will continue in the foreseeable future. Given that the sun provides a limitless source of renewable energy, conversion of this solar energy into electricity using solar cells is the key to a sustainable energy outlook in the near future and beyond. At the same time, graphene has emerged as a promising material for a wide range for energy applications, such as batteries and supercapacitors, which can be attributed to its extremely high surface area to volume ratio. Keeping this in mind, our goal is to provide a platform to everyone for reporting recent advances in Silicon PV devices and modules as well as graphene-based materials for energy applications.

We invite researchers to contribute rapid research letters, full papers, and review articles related to various aspects of silicon PV as well as graphene-based materials for energy applications. This includes, but is not restricted to,

  • Passivation materials and passivated contacts for very high-efficiency silicon solar cells;
  • Advanced material characterization of silicon PV materials and devices using XRD, SEM, EDS, EELS, TEM, HAADF-STEM, SIMS, RBS, etc.;
  • Silicon PV modules: degradation, losses, and reliability study;
  • Device simulations to help improve efficiency of silicon solar cells;
  • Graphene-based materials for energy storage, such as batteries and supercapacitors;
  • Graphene for various energy applications, such as solar panels, fuel cell catalysts, fuel rods for nuclear reactors, and so on.

Dr. Haider Ali
Dr. Shahzada Qamar Hussain
Dr. Archana Sinha
Dr. Michelle Vaqueiro Contreras
Dr. Anamaria Moldovan
Dr. Hisham Nasser
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Crystals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Silicon

  • Photovoltaics

  • Surface passivation

  • Heterojunctions

  • Material Characterization

  • Graphene

  • Batteries

  • Supercapacitors

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 2748 KiB  
Article
Performance Investigation of a Proposed Flipped npn Microstructure Silicon Solar Cell Using TCAD Simulation
by Marwa S. Salem, Abdelhalim Zekry, Ahmed Shaker, Mohamed Abouelatta, Mohamed M. ElBanna, Tariq S. Almurayziq, Rabie A. Ramadan and Mohammad T. Alshammari
Crystals 2022, 12(7), 959; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12070959 - 9 Jul 2022
Viewed by 1665
Abstract
This work aims at inspecting the device operation and performance of a novel flipped npn microstructure solar cell based on low-cost heavily doped silicon wafers. The flipped structure was designed to eliminate the shadowing effect as applied in the conventional silicon-based interdigitated back-contact [...] Read more.
This work aims at inspecting the device operation and performance of a novel flipped npn microstructure solar cell based on low-cost heavily doped silicon wafers. The flipped structure was designed to eliminate the shadowing effect as applied in the conventional silicon-based interdigitated back-contact cell (IBC). Due to the disappearance of the shadowing impact, the optical performance and short-circuit current density of the structure have been improved. Accordingly, the cell power conversion efficiency (PCE) has been improved in comparison to the conventional npn solar cell microstructure. A detailed analysis of the flipped npn structure was carried out in which we performed TCAD simulations for the electrical and optical performance of the flipped cell. Additionally, a comparison between the presented flipped microstructure and the conventional npn solar cell was accomplished. The PCE of the conventional npn structure was found to be 14.5%, while it was about 15% for the flipped structure when using the same cell physical parameters. Furthermore, the surface recombination velocity and base bulk lifetime, which are the most important recombination parameters, were studied to investigate their influence on the flipped microstructure performance. An efficiency of up to 16% could be reached when some design parameters were properly fine-tuned. Moreover, the impact of the different physical models on the performance of the proposed cell was studied, and it was revealed that band gap narrowing effect was the most significant factor limiting the open-circuit voltage. All the simulations accomplished in this analysis were carried out using the SILVACO TCAD process and device simulators. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Silicon and Graphene Based Materials and Related Devices)
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10 pages, 2445 KiB  
Article
Optimization of Effective Doping Concentration of Emitter for Ideal c-Si Solar Cell Device with PC1D Simulation
by Maruthamuthu Subramanian, Balaji Nagarajan, Aishwarya Ravichandran, Varsha Subhash Betageri, Gokul Sidarth Thirunavukkarasu, Elmira Jamei, Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian, Alex Stojcevski, Saad Mekhilef and Vasudeva Reddy Minnam Reddy
Crystals 2022, 12(2), 244; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12020244 - 11 Feb 2022
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3249
Abstract
Increasing silicon solar cell efficiency plays a vital role in improving the dominant market share of photo-voltaic systems in the renewable energy sector. The performance of the solar cells can be evaluated by making a profound analysis on various effective parameters, such as [...] Read more.
Increasing silicon solar cell efficiency plays a vital role in improving the dominant market share of photo-voltaic systems in the renewable energy sector. The performance of the solar cells can be evaluated by making a profound analysis on various effective parameters, such as the sheet resistance, doping concentration, thickness of the solar cell, arbitrary dopant profile, etc., using software simulation tools, such as PC1D. In this paper, we present the observations obtained from the evaluation carried out on the impact of sheet resistance on the solar cell’s parameters using PC1D software. After which, the EDNA2 simulation tool was used to analyse the emitter saturation current density for the chosen arbitrary dopant profile. Results indicated that the diffusion profile with low surface concentration and shallow junction depth can improve the blue response at the frontal side of the solar cell. The emitter saturation current density decreases from 66.52 to 36.82 fA/cm2 for the subsequent increase in sheet resistance. The blue response also increased from 89.6% to 97.5% with rise in sheet resistance. In addition, the short circuit density and open circuit voltage was also observed to be improved by 0.6 mA/cm2 and 3 mV for the sheet resistance value of 130 Ω/sq, which resulted in achieving the highest efficiency of 20.6%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Silicon and Graphene Based Materials and Related Devices)
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10 pages, 3182 KiB  
Article
Mechanism and Properties of UO2–Graphene Composite Fuel Prepared by In Situ Synthesis
by Xuezhi Wu and Bangyue Yin
Crystals 2022, 12(2), 230; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst12020230 - 7 Feb 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1671
Abstract
A nucleation method based on a composite of uranium dioxide (UO2) and graphene is presented by in situ synthesis, and the relevant mechanism and fuel properties are investigated. UO2–graphene composite fuel powders containing graphene volume (2%, 4%, 6%, and [...] Read more.
A nucleation method based on a composite of uranium dioxide (UO2) and graphene is presented by in situ synthesis, and the relevant mechanism and fuel properties are investigated. UO2–graphene composite fuel powders containing graphene volume (2%, 4%, 6%, and 8%) were prepared using a nucleation method through the reactive deposition of uranyl nitrate and aqueous ammonia on graphene by controlling the reaction parameters. The composite fuel pellets were prepared using spark plasma sintering (SPS). The results showed that the uniformity of UO2–graphene powder prepared by in situ synthesis reached up to 96.39%. An analysis on the relevant phase structure showed that only UO2 and graphene existed in the sintered pellets at 1723 K, graphene and UO2 were not destroyed during the reaction, and the pellet densities for the in-situ synthesis were 95.56%TD, 95.32%TD, 95.08%TD, and 94.76%TD for graphene contents of 2%, 4%, 6%, and 8%, respectively. The thermal conductivities of pellets at 293 K increased by 12.27%, 20.13%, 27.47%, and 34.13%, and by 18.36%, 35.00%, 47.07%, and 58.93% at 1273 K for 2%, 4%, 6%, and 8% graphene contents, respectively. The performance of graphene in the fuel was superior at high temperatures, which overcame shortcomings due to the low thermal conductivity of UO2 at high temperatures. SEM results showed that the grain sizes of the pellets prepared by synthesis in situ were 10–30 μm, and there was no obvious pore at the grain boundary because the grains were closely bound. The graphene was uniformly coated by UO2, and the thermal conductivity of the pellets improved upon the formation of a bridging heat conduction network. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Silicon and Graphene Based Materials and Related Devices)
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