Electronic Devices and Semiconductor Manufacturing Commons^™

Engineering Composite Gridlines For Improved Solar Module Reliability, Andre Chavez

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Renewable energy sources, such as solar power, are rapidly expanding worldwide to meet increased energy demands. However, these sources are exposed to challenging environmental stressors, such as extreme wind, heavy snow loads, and hailstorms that can cause irreversible damage to the crystalline semiconductor solar cells. Today, single crystalline silicon solar cells dominate the market, and our work is focused on improving their reliability against environmental stressors. One of the main degradation mechanisms caused by environmental stressors is cell cracks. These microcracks can go virtually undetected and lead to reduced power output from solar modules over time. To solve this engineering …

Performance And Economics Of Solar Inverters And Module Level Power Electronics In A 1 Mw Photovoltaic System, Maxwell Criswell

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Photovoltaic solar panels convert sunlight to electricity in the form of direct current; therefore, a necessary component of every photovoltaic system is an inverter to convert the electricity to usable alternating current. There are various commercially available inverter technologies manufactured today such as microinverters, string inverters, and central inverters, as well as module level power electronic devices such as DC optimizers that are capable of improving system performance in string and central inverter systems. This thesis compares the performance and economics of five different inverter and module level power electronic systems through model simulation using Helioscope software. The five alternatives …

Pixelated Gasb Membranes For Photovoltaics: Fabrication And Structure-Property Relationships, Vijay Saradhi Mangu

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

In this thesis, I present a reliable and efficient approach to heterogeneous integration of single-crystalline GaSb semiconductors with highly mismatched materials. The mismatch may refer to the crystalline structure and the thermal expansion coefficient of single-crystalline GaSb and the other materials of interest. The strategy of hetero-integration relies on epitaxial lift-off. This approach prevents the formation of extended structural defects that are detrimental to the performance of optoelectronic devices and preserves GaSb growth substrates for potential reuse.

Within my research work, I have overcome some outstanding challenges of epitaxial lift-off of GaSb, and I have demonstrated the operation of single-crystalline …

Thermal And Mechanical Energy Harvesting Using Lead Sulfide Colloidal Quantum Dots, Taher Ghomian

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The human body is an abundant source of energy in the form of heat and mechanical movement. The ability to harvest this energy can be useful for supplying low-consumption wearable and implantable devices. Thermoelectric materials are usually used to harvest human body heat for wearable devices; however, thermoelectric generators require temperature gradient across the device to perform appropriately. Since they need to attach to the heat source to absorb the heat, temperature equalization decreases their efficiencies. Moreover, the electrostatic energy harvester, working based on the variable capacitor structure, is the most compatible candidate for harvesting low-frequency-movement of the human body. …

A Novel Design For A Silicon And Cadmium Telluride Tandem Solar Cell., Jacob A Vittitow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Bifacial Solar Panel Database Interfacepumet: A Tool For Global Meteorological Data Mining For Performance And Reliability Prediction Of Large Scale Solar Farms, Binglin Zhao, Xingshu Sun, Muhammad A. Alam

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Solar energy is one of the top runners among the renewable energy. The design and deployment of solar panels are geographic- and climate-specific to optimize the total energy yield. However, the existing meteorological databases are not accessible to users for direct download and visualization. Hence, we have developed a tool that allows users to download and visualize a variety of global meteorological databases, for instance, the National Solar Radiation Database (NSRDB). Enabled by our tool, both historical and Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) data, such as solar irradiance and ambient temperature, across the entire world in specific time intervals (e.g., hourly …

Reduction In Recombination Current Density In Boron Doped Silicon Using Atomic Hydrogen, Matthew Garett Young

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The solar industry has grown immensely in recent years and has reached a point where solar energy has now become inexpensive enough that it is starting to emerge as a mainstream electrical generation source. However, recent economic analysis has suggested that for solar to become a truly wide spread source of electricity, the costs still need to plummet by a factor of 8x. This demands new and innovative concepts to help lower such cost. In pursuit of this goal, this dissertation examines the use of atomic hydrogen to lessen the recombination current density in the boron doped region of n-type …

Analysis And Simulation Of Photovoltaic Systems Incorporating Battery Energy Storage, Oluwaseun M. Akeyo

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Solar energy is an abundant renewable source, which is expected to play an increasing role in the grid's future infrastructure for distributed generation. The research described in the thesis focuses on the analysis of integrating multi-megawatt photovoltaics (PV) systems with battery energy storage into the existing grid and on the theory supporting the electrical operation of components and systems. The PV system is divided into several sections, each having its own DC-DC converter for maximum power point tracking and a two-level grid connected inverter with different control strategies. The functions of the battery are explored by connecting it to the …

Universality Of Non-Ohmic Shunt Leakage In Thin-Film Solar Cells, Sourabh Dongaonkar, Jonathan D. Servaites, Grayson M. Ford, Stephen Loser, James E. Moore, Ryan M. Gelfand, Hooman Mohseni, Hugh W. Hillhouse, Rakesh Agrawal, Mark A. Ratner, Tobin J. Marks, Mark Lundstrom, Muhammad A. Alam

Birck and NCN Publications

We compare the dark current-voltage (IV) characteristics of three different thin-film solar cell types: hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) p-i-n cells, organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) cells, and Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ (CIGS) cells. All three device types exhibit a significant shunt leakage current at low forward bias (V< ∼ 0.4) and reverse bias, which cannot be explained by the classical solar cell diode model. This parasitic shunt current exhibits non-Ohmic behavior, as opposed to the traditional constant shunt resistance model for photovoltaics. We show here that this shunt leakage (I_sh), across all three solar cell types considered, is characterized by the following common phenomenological features: (a) voltage symmetry about V = 0, (b) nonlinear (power law) voltage dependence, and (c) extremely weak temperature dependence. Based on this analysis, we provide a simple method of subtracting this shunt current component from …