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157640 https://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.54888 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ 2019 xviii, 158 pages : color illustrations Doctoral Dissertation Academic theses Text eng Muralidharan, Pradyumna Goodnick, Stephen M Vasileska, Dragica Honsberg, Christiana Ringhofer, Christian Arizona State University Partial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2019 Includes bibliographical references (pages 150-158) Field of study: Electrical engineering Silicon photonic technology continues to dominate the solar industry driven by steady improvement in device and module efficiencies. Currently, the world record conversion efficiency (~26.6%) for single junction silicon solar cell technologies is held by silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells based on hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) and crystalline silicon (c-Si). These solar cells utilize the concept of carrier selective contacts to improve device efficiencies. A carrier selective contact is designed to optimize the collection of majority carriers while blocking the collection of minority carriers. In the case of SHJ cells, a thin intrinsic a-Si:H layer provides crucial passivation between doped a-Si:H and the c-Si absorber that is required to create a high efficiency cell. There has been much debate regarding the role of the intrinsic a-Si:H passivation layer on the transport of photogenerated carriers, and its role in optimizing device performance. In this work, a multiscale model is presented which utilizes different simulation methodologies to study interfacial transport across the intrinsic a-Si:H/c-Si heterointerface and through the a-Si:H passivation layer. In particular, an ensemble Monte Carlo simulator was developed to study high field behavior of photogenerated carriers at the intrinsic a-Si:H/c-Si heterointerface, a kinetic Monte Carlo program was used to study transport of photogenerated carriers across the intrinsic a-Si:H passivation layer, and a drift-diffusion model was developed to model the behavior in the quasi-neutral regions of the solar cell. This work reports de-coupled and self-consistent simulations to fully understand the role and effect of transport across the a-Si:H passivation layer in silicon heterojunction solar cells, and relates this to overall solar cell device performance. Electrical Engineering Applied physics Computational Physics Numerical Modeling Photovoltaics Semiconductor Device Modeling Semiconductor devices Solar Cells Silicon Solar Cells Photovoltaic power generation Multiscale modeling of silicon heterojunction solar cells