Simulation of IPV effect in In-doped c-Si with optimized indium concentration and layer thickness

Impurity photovoltaic effect(IPV) is one of the attempts to improve efficiency of solar cells and is the idea of exploiting three step generation via impurity states within the band gap to utilize sub-band gap photons. The three transitions are of electrons from valence band (VB) to conduction band (CB), valence band to impurity level and impurity level to conduction band. In the present simulation, we have used the p+nn+ structure in order to achieve higher photogenerated current and efficiency without loosing the open circuit voltage. Compared to other group-III elements in silicon solar cell, Indium is the most suitable material to achieve higher benefit in IPV. In this simulation, the model of IPV is considered to achieve the maximum benefit from the impurity state in a solar cell. To simulate we have used the one dimensional simulation program, SCAPS-1D. Again light trapping is an important part of IPV solar cell that has been considered in this simulation. Using IPV we have numerically demonstrated, an increase in efficiency, by 2.79% over that without-IPV effect and a 3.23% increase over the efficiency, 30.9% as reported by Schmeits and Mani [1].