The effect of cell thickness on energy production of amorphous silicon solar cells

Solar cells are currently evaluated under laboratory conditions and not under realistic operating conditions. Amorphous silicon (a-Si) devices exhibit a complicated dependence on operating conditions, with a major concern being the degradation of these devices in realistic operation. Optimising these devices for energy production of the stabilised state is dependent on many factors, with one of the main inputs being the overall thickness of the cell. In this paper, the effect of intrinsic layer (i-layer) thickness on the cell performance, the degradation and also the energy production under realistic conditions are investigated. It is apparent from the experiment that there has to be an optimisation of the i-layer thickness to maximise the light absorption and minimise the degradation, if higher performance and energy production is to be achieved.