Theoretical Aspect of Physical Phenomena in Inorganic Photovoltaic Cells. Electrical Modeling and Numerical Simulation

Abstract

This work is based on the development of a theoretical model describing the drift and diffusion transport of photogenerated charge carriers and the impact of space charge on this transport in relation to the different physical phenomena characterizing the photovoltaic conversion in an inorganic silicon-based cell. In a second step, we used a numerical solution of the transport differential equations based on the Runge-Kutta algorithm in the framework of the finite difference method, This led us to an electrical model of the photovoltaic cell and of the photo-generated currents by RLC circuit equipped with a diode modeling the direction of electron and hole transport and allowed us to study the relations between the optical and electrical properties of the cell, as well as the influence of the different concentrations of impurities used for the n-type and p-type doping of the silicon on the properties of absorption of the light photons, the spectral response as well as the conductivity, the open-circuit potential and the short-circuit current.

Keywords

• numerical simulation
• electrical modeling
• finite difference method
• solar cell