| Oct 13, 2011 |
Small defects mean big problems for industrial solar cells |
| (Nanowerk News) Nanoscale clustering of metal impurities at intragranular dislocations within industrial mc-Si solar cells have been observed by users from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology working with the Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) X-Ray Microscopy Group, in collaboration with scientists at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). |
| These nanoscale clusters are shown to directly correlate with local recombination activity within the cell, regulating the overall performance of the energy conversion device ("Nanoprobe X-ray fluorescence characterization of defects in large-area solar cells"). |
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| High-resolution X-ray nanofluorescence spectroscopy identifying metallic nanoclusters responsible for poor transport in solar cells. |
| Industrial conversion efficiencies of solar cells are far from their theoretical maxima, and their performance is often limited by inhomogeneously distributed nanoscale defects. The team used X-ray nanofluorescence spectroscopy at the Hard X-Ray Nanoprobe beamline to probe the elemental nature of recombination-active intragranular dislocations in industrial solar cells. Nanoscale metal impurities of copper and iron were shown to cluster near dislocations with a high recombination strength, and be absent from dislocations with a low recombination strength. |
| This correlation gives an important insight into the effects of nanoscale metal impurities on energy conversion device performance. |
| Source: Argonne National Laboratory |
