Compare crystalline silicon and perovskite based cells. How would you improve efficiencies of both cells?
Crystalline silicon
- Mono crystalline silicon cells is where the crystal lattice is continuous with no grain boundaries.
- Polycrystalline silicon cells are only homogeneous over short range (amorphous).
- Mono crystalline has recently become more dominant in terms of market share (why?).
- ”The more grain boundaries in the material, the shorter the lifetime of the charge carriers. Hence, the grain size plays an important role in the recombination rate.”
- Quartzite is oxidised silicon. Carbon sources (like wood, or coal) at really high temperatures is used to dissociated the oxygen creating carbon monoxide.
- Why is the p-type layer much thicker than the n-type?
- Silicon is a good absorber layer due to the fact that it’s band gap lies in the visible spectrum (blue mainly?)
Perovskite
- In chemistry, a halide is a binary chemical compound, of which one part is a halogen atom and the other part is an element or radical that is less electronegative than the halogen.
- Shown large increases in efficiency.
- Can decompose when exposed to the elements. They are not currently operationally viable because of their poor lifetime.
- A lot of benefit comes from the perovskite chemical structure itself.
- Perovskite’s have flexibility in how they are made. So their band gap can be tuned?
The size of the total report should be between 500 and 1000 words. You may use tables to compare cells.