Electrodeposition of crystalline silicon films from silicon dioxide for low-cost photovoltaic applications

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Zou, Xingli Ge, Jianbang Sadoway, Donald R. Yu, Edward T. Bard, Allen J.
Copyright Year	2019
Abstract	Crystalline-silicon solar cells have dominated the photovoltaics market for the past several decades. One of the long standing challenges is the large contribution of silicon wafer cost to the overall module cost. Here, we demonstrate a simple process for making high-purity solar-grade silicon films directly from silicon dioxide via a one-step electrodeposition process in molten salt for possible photovoltaic applications. High-purity silicon films can be deposited with tunable film thickness and doping type by varying the electrodeposition conditions. These electrodeposited silicon films show about 40 to 50% of photocurrent density of a commercial silicon wafer by photoelectrochemical measurements and the highest power conversion efficiency is 3.1% as a solar cell. Compared to the conventional manufacturing process for solar grade silicon wafer production, this approach greatly reduces the capital cost and energy consumption, providing a promising strategy for low-cost silicon solar cells production. The photovoltaics market has been dominated by crystalline silicon solar cells despite the high cost of the silicon wafers. Here Zou et al. develop a one-step electrodeposition process in molten salt to produce high-purity solar-grade silicon films, delivering power conversion efficiency of 3.1%.
File Format	PDF HTM / HTML
DOI	10.1038/s41467-019-13065-w
PubMed reference number	31852891
Journal	Medline
Volume Number	10
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://etylab.ece.utexas.edu/files/2020/01/Nature_Commun_10_5772_2019_SI.pdf
Alternate Webpage(s)	https://etylab.ece.utexas.edu/files/2020/01/Nature_Commun_10_5772_2019.pdf
Journal	Nature Communications
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article