Browsing by Author "Chumo, Mourrice David Boaz"

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    Performance characteristics of locally fabricated MOS solar cells
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 1992) Chumo, Mourrice David Boaz
    Photovoltaic technology has been improving extremely rapidly during the past decade. Solar cells are an exciting photovoltaic option for generating cost-effective electricity in 1995 and beyond. With continuing improvement, it is expected that the solar cells will become the utility option for peaking power needs. In this work Metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) solar cells have been fabricated and their performance characteristics have been investigated. The thin oxide layers of the cells were grown under the open air condition and their thickness measured by the ellipsometer. Cell characteristics in the dark and under AM1 solar spectrum were determined as a function of oxide thickness. The open-circuit voltage was found to be in the range 0.21 -0.4 V for oxide thickness in the range 28.5 - 20A. The largest short circuit current was 175 at oxide thickness of 20A, at cell area of 18.76cm2. Efficiency and other cell parameters were calculated. An efficiency of 1% was reached with oxide thickness of 20A. The Fortran program was developed and used to determine the efficiency of the solar cells. On using this program efficiency of 2.3 percent was obtained. The technological factors affecting efficiency of the cell have been discussed. A summary of the major fimdings and suggestions for future research are also given.