Description
Solar energy, including solar heating, solar architecture, solar thermal electricity and solar photovoltaics, is one of the primary energy sources replacing fossil fuels. Being one of the most important techniques, significant research has been conducted in solar cell efficiency improvement. Simulation of various structures and materials of solar cells provides a deeper understanding of device operation and ways to improve their efficiency. Over the last two decades, polycrystalline thin-film Cadmium-Sulfide and Cadmium-Telluride (CdS/CdTe) solar cells fabricated on glass substrates have been considered as one of the most promising candidate in the photovoltaic technologies, for their similar efficiency and low costs when compared to traditional silicon-based solar cells. In this work a fast one dimensional time-dependent/steady-state drift-diffusion simulator, accelerated by adaptive non-uniform mesh and automatic time-step control, for modeling solar cells has been developed and has been used to simulate a CdS/CdTe solar cell. These models are used to reproduce transients of carrier transport in response to step-function signals of different bias and varied light intensity. The time-step control models are also used to help convergence in steady-state simulations where constrained material constants, such as carrier lifetimes in the order of nanosecond and carrier mobility in the order of 100 cm2/Vs, must be applied.
Details
Title
- One-dimensional fast transient simulator for modeling CdS/CdTe solar cells
Contributors
- Guo, Da (Author)
- Vasileska, Dragica (Thesis advisor)
- Goodnick, Stephen M (Committee member)
- Sankin, Igor (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2013
Subjects
Resource Type
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Note
- thesisPartial requirement for: M.S., Arizona State University, 2013
- bibliographyIncludes bibliographical references (p. 70-72)
- Field of study: Electrical engineering
Citation and reuse
Statement of Responsibility
by Da Guo