Symposium EN11-Silicon for Photovoltaics

Silicon continues to dominate the photovoltaic market with increasing cell efficiencies and lower costs. To maintain this trend, sustained research in key and emerging areas is vital, including: (i) the understanding and mitigation of bulk absorber material defects; (ii) the development of carrier-selective, passivating contacts for high voltage devices; (iii) low-cost, low resistive metallization schemes; and (iv) the design of device architectures towards maximum current generation, which includes strategies aimed at improved utilization of the solar spectrum by combining silicon solar cells with complementary technologies such as perovskite and III-V solar cells for tandem solar cell fabrication. This symposium is focused on these themes, and especially welcomes scientific and technological contributions aimed at increasing the conversion efficiency and/or lowering the material and fabrication costs. Research contributions on silicon-enabled absorbing or passivating materials, new silicon allotropes and cross-cutting developments from other technologies are highly encouraged.

Topics will include:

Absorber materials: We are especially interested in the development of new silicon-enabled absorbers that could offer higher absorption and/or lower Auger recombination (e.g. BaSi2, new allotropes of Si, etc.) and in alternative absorber fabrication methods such as layer separation/transfer, epitaxial wafers, or solid-/liquid-induced crystallization aimed at kerfless silicon or ultra-thin silicon absorbers.
Carrier-selective passivating contacts: We welcome contributions discussing fundamental, underlying principles of carrier-selective contacts (i.e. surface passivation, band alignment/bending, Fermi-level pinning at interfaces), deposition and doping methods, hydrogenation, new materials (including transparent electrodes and doping-free approaches) and new functionalities (temperature stability, transparency, patterned depositions). We particularly also welcome contributions discussing deposition
Photon management: We are looking forward to contributions aimed at improved utilization of the solar spectrum by novel optical designs, surface texturing, development of back-contacted architectures, and especially silicon-based tandem solar cells, combined with perovskite, III-V or alternative top cell materials.
New Metallization Strategies: Screen-printed metal contacts to c-Si solar cells dominate the market due to low cost with acceptable performance. We encourage research on both evolutionary and revolutionary advances in metallization technologies, especially to passivated contacts, and to the elimination of silver. Submissions are encouraged on the materials science, fabrication, device application, theory, simulation, and characterization in these emerging areas.
Other Topics of Interest: Silicon and silicon-enabled photovoltaic devices, such as silicon heterojunction and carrier-selective passivating contact solar cells, all-silicon tandem solar cells, tandem-on-silicon solar cells using perovskite, III-V materials, or alternative top cells, new device architectures, bifacial cells, and silicon nanowires/nanocrystals solar cells and thin-film silicon solar cells.
Silicon film materials such as amorphous/nanocrystalline silicon, silicon, silicon carbides and oxides, epitaxial silicon and epitaxial layers on silicon, silicon-germanium, barium-disilicide and silicon-(carbon-)tin alloys. Growth, doping, characterization and modeling.

Invited Speakers:

Jinsong Huang (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)
Yanfa Yan (University of Toledo, USA)
Michael McGehee (Stanford University, USA)
Mariana Bertoni (Arizona State University, USA)
Steve Albrecht (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Germany)
Martin Bivour (Fraunhofer ISE, Germany)
Friedhelm Finger (Julich Forschungszentrum, Germany)
Qijie Guo (Dupont, USA)
Daniel Hiller (Australia National University, Australia)
Susan Huang (EERE DOE, USA)
Olindo Isabella (Delft University, Netherlands)
Quentin Jeangros (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
Sarah Kajari-Schroeder (ISFH, Institute of solar energy research, Germany)
Erwin Kessels (Eindhoven University, Netherlands)
Zhengxin Liu (SIMIT, Shanghai Institute of Micro-system and Information Technology, China)
Adam Lorenz (1366 Technologies, USA)
Hidenori Mizuno (AIST, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan)
Benjamin Strahm (Meyer Burger, Switzerland)
Eszter Voroshazi (IMEC, Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum VZW, Belgium)
Di Yan (Australia National University, Australia)
Xiaodan Zhang (Nankai University, China)