Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 95 (2011) 1188–1192

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Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solmat

On the ultra-miniaturization of concentrator solar cells

Alexis Vossier 1, Baruch Hirsch 1, Eugene A. Katz 2, Jeffrey M. Gordon n,3
Department of Solar Energy and Environmental Physics, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boqer Campus 84990, Israel

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The trend of cell miniaturization in concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) – currently in mm-scale and
Received 28 September 2010 motivated by efficiency improvements linked to reduced series resistance – begs the question whether
Received in revised form fundamental energetic considerations limit ultra-miniaturization. Mitigating factors subsume the
28 December 2010
busbars and metallization grid, the contributions of which embody subtle tradeoffs and vary non-
Accepted 29 December 2010
Available online 15 January 2011
trivially as cell size is reduced – evaluated via a distributed circuit simulation model, with some
supporting experimental evidence. Concurrently, the influence of cell size on how metal grid design can
Keywords: lower series resistance is assessed, prompted by micro-concentrators that completely eliminate grid
Photovoltaics shadowing and allow far greater metallization coverage.
Concentrator
& 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Miniaturization
Solar
Multijunction
Metallization

1. Introduction (typically optimized for irradiance values of order 102–103 suns,

Series resistance losses constrain concentrator solar cell per-
formance at high irradiance [1], with smaller cells incurring lower
losses (since cell current scales with active area). Do basic
energetic considerations limit cell ultra-miniaturization? The
dominant factors in addressing this question are: (a) busbars
consume a progressively larger fraction of gross cell (chip) area at
smaller photo-active areas, with the affiliated parasitic loss from
the unilluminated area and (b) the metal grid that embodies a
tradeoff between shadowing losses and series resistance [2,3].
The latter prompts revisiting the value of micro-concentrators that
attach to the cell surface and can completely obviate grid shadowing
by redistributing the flux between the metal fingers. They were also
viewed to allow cells to be redesigned for higher metallization
coverage (at no incremental optical loss) in order to reduce cell series
resistance [2]. But the competition between diminished series resis-
tance and greater parasitic dark regions beneath the widened metal
fingers remained unresolved, and will also be scrutinized here.
Will cell efficiency improve by decreasing cell area well below
the 1 mm2 value to which commercial CPV has evolved
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jeff@bgu.ac.il (J.M. Gordon).
1
These authors contributed equally to this work.
2
Also at: The Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology,
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheva 84105, Israel.
3
Also at: The Pearlstone Center for Aeronautical Engineering Studies,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,
Beersheva 84105, Israel.
with 1 sun¼1 mW/mm2)? If so, to what degree of miniaturiza-
tion? The architecture considered is that of current state-of-the-
art ultra-efficient (  40%) III–V alloy 3-junction cells (e.g., [4]).
2. Description of the model
The solar cell model here is based on distributed elementary
circuit units [5,6] (Fig. 1), each treated as an equivalent non-ideal
photodiode, for which the current density J as a function of
voltage V can be expressed as
 qðV þ IRs Þ  V þIR
J ¼ Jph Jo e nkT 1  ð1Þ
Rsh
where T is cell temperature, k is Boltzmann’s constant, q is
the electron’s charge, Jph is the photo-generated current density
(proportional to irradiance), Jo is the dark current density, n is the
diode ideality factor and Rs and Rsh refer to lumped-parameter series
and shunt resistances, respectively. The approximation of a single
value of Jo and a single value of n is valid as long as the voltage drop
across the cell surface is small compared to kT/q (E25–30 mV for
CPV). The input parameters are diodes, resistors and current gen-
erators, rather than the explicit material properties required for the
alternative finite-element approach, which are based on solving the
basic semiconductor equations after one defines device architecture.
The three types of elementary units in the model are (Fig. 2):
(1) Illuminated area, with inhomogeneous flux maps simulated
by varying Jph among sub-elements. Ohmic losses have two

0927-0248/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.solmat.2010.12.053
 A. Vossier et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 95 (2011) 1188–1192 1189

Fig. 1. Model of the 3-junction cell based on three types of distributed circuit units (busbar, illuminated area and fingers). R denotes resistance, Iph is the photocurrent and
D a diode. For clarity, only the equivalent circuits associated with the top InGaP junction plus the busbar and fingers are shown. The equivalent circuits for the lower
junctions are similar, with the electrical connection between them via resistors representing the tunnel diodes.

Fig. 2. Surface geometry of square, nominally 1, 0.2 and 0.1 mm cells, all with two 0.1 mm-wide busbars. Imposing a typical metal finger width and spacing of 0.010 and
0.090 mm, respectively, constrains a cell’s actual active width (Tables 2 and 3).

Table 1
Materials and resistances in the 3-junction InGaP/InGaAs/Ge cell model.

Layer Material Dopant Dopant density Thickness, Resistivity, Lateral resistance, Vertical contribution,
(cm  3) t (mm) r (O mm) r/t (O) rt (O mm2)

Metallization Ag/Au/AuGe N/A N/A 5 E0 E0 1  10  3

Window AlInP N 4  1017 0.025 1.2 4808 3  10  6
Emitter GaInP N 2  1018 0.100 0.31 313 3.1  10  6
Base GaInP P 1.5  1017 0.500 120 23 810 6  10  3
Emitter GaAs N 1  1018 0.100 0.074 74 7.4  10  7
Base GaAs P 18  1016 3.500 20 558 6.8  10  3
Emitter Ge N 2  1019 0.200 0.0082 4 1.6  10  7
Base Ge P 3  1017 140 1.1 0.8 1.6  10  2
1190 A. Vossier et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 95 (2011) 1188–1192

vertical (Rvert_base, Rvert_emitter) and two lateral components
(Rlat_base, Rlat_emitter) with an additional window resistance
Rwindow for the top (InGaP) layer. A single diode simulates all
recombination losses.
(2) Busbars: The resistive network (devoid of current generation)
is similar to that for the illuminated area, but with an
additional resistance Rfront_contact to account for the voltage
drop at the metal-semiconductor interface. Lateral current in
the busbar flows through resistor Rbusbar.
(3) Fingers: similar to the units used for the busbar, but exchan-
ging Rbusbar with resistor Rfinger to simulate current flow along
the fingers.
The choice of material properties and component resistances,
summarized in Table 1, was guided by [7], and is commensurate
with champion cell efficiencies of  40% at 500 suns for an active
area of  25 mm2 [4]. The template considered here has a square
active region, with two 0.1 mm-wide busbars (see Fig. 3).
(Throughout, ‘‘active’’ area refers to the irradiated region that
includes the metal fingers but does not include the busbars.)
The additional modeling assumptions are:
(a) Negligible edge recombination: primarily based on the cells
operating at high irradiance where edge losses are small relative
0.5
0.4
0.1 mm
0.3 0.2 mm
Efficiency
to the other loss mechanisms. Furthermore, the minimal cell
size deduced below would only increase when edge recombina-
tion is not insubstantial because its relative contribution (peri-
meter-to-area ratio) increases as the cell is miniaturized.
(b) Adequacy of a 2D simulation: The chief advantage of a 3D
simulation would be superior accounting for resistive losses
in the fingers. For mm-scale (or smaller) cells, finger resistive
losses are usually modest because of low current per finger
and short finger length. Typically, the voltage drop along the
fingers will not exceed 5–10 mV for a 1 mm2 cell even at
10,000 suns. Consequently, invoking a lumped finger resis-
tance rather than a distributed one (i.e., using a 2D instead of
a 3D model) will not affect the results significantly.
(c) The voltage drop for current flow through a tunnel diode is
taken to vary linearly with current density, with an equivalent
resistance calculated from the slope of its current–voltage
curve in the tunneling regime. Here, a value of 0.4 O mm2 is
used for both tunnel junctions, and cell current densities are
assumed not to exceed the tunnel diode threshold [8].
3. Impact of cell size
First, the width and spacing of the fingers were taken as fixed
parameters typical of commercial CPV cells: 0.010 and 0.090 mm,
respectively (Fig. 2). The simulated efficiency and fill factor (FF being
the solar cell parameter most sensitive to series resistance) of a
3-junction cell are plotted in Fig. 3 as a function of flux concentra-
tion for a nominal cell linear dimension from 10 down to 0.1 mm.
The peak performance values are listed in Table 2.
The basis for improved performance (Fig. 3) is fundamentally
different at the larger and smaller ends of the size scale. As cell size

0.5 mm decreases from 10 to 1 mm, the efficiency gain derives mainly from
1 mm
5 mm lower resistive losses, as reflected in the reduction in FF at irradiance
0.2 10 mm values above the order of 102 suns. However, the insensitivity of FF to
cell size below 1 mm indicates that the area-dependent contribution
of series resistance becomes negligible compared to other contribu-
0.1 tions (e.g., resistances associated with the bulk or tunnel junction).
Stipulating 0.1 mm-wide busbars imposes a substantial non-
0.0 active area for the smallest cells. Simulations for the sub-mm cells
revealed an insensitivity of efficiency to busbar widths as narrow as
1 10 100 1000 10000
Flux concentration (suns)
Table 2
Peak performance for assorted cell sizes covering 6 orders of magnitude in active
1.0 cell area.

Nominal active Actual active cell Number of Metal grid Maximum

cell width (mm) width (mm) metal fingers shadowing efficiency
0.8
0.1 mm 10 9.990 99 0.099 0.382*
0.2 mm 5 4.990 49 0.098 0.387
0.6 0.5 mm 1 0.990 9 0.091 0.393
Fill factor

1 mm 0.5 0.490 4 0.082 0.398

5 mm 0.2 0.190 1 0.053 0.416
10 mm 0.1 0.100 0 0 0.443
0.4
n
Ratio of short-circuit current to solar input power ¼0.164 A/W.

0.2
Table 3
Front-contact grid geometries simulated for a nominal active cell width of 1 mm.
0.0 The base case analyzed in Section 3 is Design B.
1 10 100 1000 10000
Case Photo-active Finger width Inter-finger Metal grid
Flux concentration (suns) width (mm) (mm) spacing (mm) coverage

Fig. 3. (a) Efficiency and (b) FF of the 3-junction cell as a function of flux concentration A 0.995 0.005 0.095 0.045
for a broad range of cell sizes. Efficiency first improves with concentration because of B 0.990 0.010 0.090 0.091
the fundamental increase of open-circuit voltage with irradiance, but then worsens C 0.975 0.025 0.075 0.231
when high irradiance amplifies resistive losses. At fixed flux concentration, efficiency D 0.950 0.050 0.050 0.474
and FF consistently improve (but then plateau) as the cell is miniaturized.
 A. Vossier et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 95 (2011) 1188–1192 1191

0.02 mm. Hence the 0.1 mm busbar width was retained for uni-
formity of comparison, cognizant that far higher ratios of net-to-
gross area should not introduce perceptible performance penalties.
As cell dimension further decreases to the order of 0.1 mm, the
principal energetic benefit of miniaturization stems from lower
shadowing losses of the active area (Table 3, Fig. 2, and recall that
the metal finger width and spacing are fixed). Since the need for
the metal grid vanishes when cell size reaches  0.1 mm (and
since the benefit of reduced series resistance with miniaturization
asymptotes at cell widths of  1 mm), there appears to be no
incentive for yet smaller cells.
4. Influence of metal grid dimensions
The geometry of the front-contact grid signifies the tradeoff
between shadowing and resistive losses. However, the introduc-
tion of micro-concentrators that obviate essentially all grid
shadowing by redistributing the concentrated flux on photo-
active regions between the metal fingers [2] (without modifying
the total cell flux) focuses the analysis on the non-optical aspects
of grid design. Micro-concentrators create the possibility of
redesigning for higher metallization coverage. The issue is non-
trivial because expanded metallization both reduces series resis-
tance and incurs losses due to more parasitic dark area.
To isolate the impact of higher metal coverage, a second set of
simulations was run for a cell with a nominal active area of 1 mm2,
comprising 9 metal fingers of variable width and spacing, as
summarized in Table 3. The simulated conversion efficiency and FF
of these 4 configurations are plotted in Fig. 4(a) and (b) as a function
of averaged flux concentration, i.e., total flux divided by total active
cell area (which includes the metal fingers but not the busbars).
Decreasing the spacing between the fingers leads to an
improvement in the sheet emitter resistance (that comprises a
chief contribution to cell series resistance [9]), but, for the 1 mm2
cell, the calculations show the energetic benefit to be negligible
up to  1000 suns. Efficiency actually worsens at higher flux
density, deriving almost completely from a reduced FF. The
insensitivity of cell performance to thicker metal fingers (at least
up to 1000 suns) might actually be beneficial by relaxing the
tolerances in front-contact deposition processes.
The results for the 1 mm2 cell indicate that the cell’s resistive
losses (proportional to the square of the current, and heightened
at high irradiance due to the increase in local concentration with
micro-concentrators) dominate at averaged concentration values
above 1000 suns, and militate against the benefit of greater
metal coverage.
The scale dependence of the problem reveals different conclu-
sions for the 100 mm2 cell, where increased metal coverage can
reduce overall resistive losses non-negligibly. To wit, cell effi-
ciency at 500 suns improves noticeably (10% relative) as metal
coverage increases from 5% to 10%, but with no improvement for
greater coverage (Fig. 4c and d). This relative improvement
increases with irradiance, and actually peaks at a metal coverage
of  25% at flux concentration values of order 103—a consequence
of the tradeoff between reduced grid resistance versus greater
dark current area. (It should be noted that practical consi-
derations related to passive heat rejection capabilities and
accommodating exceptionally high amperage will likely restrict
100 mm2 cells to flux concentration values not exceeding
 103 suns.)
5. Summary and conclusions
The principal finding is how a balance of energetic incentives
favors cell miniaturization, but not below active cell linear

0.5 1.0
nominal 1 mm active width nominal 1 mm active width
0.4 0.8
metal coverage:
Efficiency

Fill factor

0.3 0.6 0.045

metal coverage: 0.045 0.091
0.091 0.231
0.2 0.231 0.4 0.474
0.474
0.1 0.2

0.0 0.0
1 10 100 1000 10000 1 10 100 1000 10000
Averaged flux concentration (suns) Averaged flux concentration (suns)

0.5 1.0
nominal 10 mm active width nominal 10 mm active width
0.4 0.8
Efficiency

Fill factor

0.3 0.6
metal coverage: 0.050 metal coverage: 0.050
0.2 0.099 0.4 0.099
0.248 0.248
0.497 0.497
0.1 0.2

0.0 0.0
1 10 100 1000 10000 1 10 100 1000 10000
Averaged flux concentration (suns) Averaged flux concentration (suns)

Fig. 4. Performance sensitivity to metal coverage for an InGaP/InGaAs/Ge 3-junction cell. In all instances, a micro-concentrator totally obviates grid shadowing losses,
which is why the efficiencies in Fig. 4 are higher than corresponding values in Fig. 3. (a) Efficiency and (b) FF for the nominal 1 mm2 cell as a function of averaged flux
concentration for the 4 metal grid geometries noted in Table 3. Cell performance is insensitive to metal coverage up to  1000 suns and then worsens as metal coverage
increases. The sensitivity of open-circuit voltage to metal coverage (not shown) turned out to be insignificant up to 1000 suns and barely a 3% (relative) effect at
10,000 suns. (c) and (d) The same exercise performed for the 100 mm2 cell, illustrating a tangible benefit of increased metallization.
1192 A. Vossier et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 95 (2011) 1188–1192
dimensions of  0.1 mm, deriving from the combination of
(a) the reduction in cell resistive losses asymptoting with minia-
turization at a cell width of  1 mm,
(b) the optical gain due to the lessening of grid shadowing losses
with miniaturization, but with
(c) the need for a metal grid becoming insignificant below an
active cell width of  0.1 mm.
Evaluating the economics of cell miniaturization as part of a
full CPV system analysis can be performed with software
packages such as Ref. [10]. Usually, the relative costs of system
components (and hence conclusions about nominally optimal
configurations) are case-specific [11]. At high concentration,
where the cells comprise a small fraction of total system cost,
an increase in that fraction may not impact the economic balance.
However, as cells are miniaturized, in addition to the worsening
ratio of active-to-gross (chip) area and greater waste in the
process of cutting smaller cells from parent wafers, the number
of lead wires, micro-wire bonds, bypass diodes, heat-sink bonds
and optical components increases in proportion to the reciprocal
of active cell area, which may represent non-negligible incre-
mental costs, in particular when cell area decreases to the order of
10  1–10  2 mm2. Conversely, miniaturization also creates the
possibility of more compact, less expensive concentrator optics,
with less expensive optical fabrication and packaging
technologies—crucial because the optics can constitute about half
of total system cost [11]. Accordingly, while noting these con-
siderations, this study focuses on the energetic pros and cons of
cell miniaturization.
To our knowledge, there have been no systematic fabrication
studies along these lines; but recent data illuminate the trends.
Specifically, for concentrator cells where the basic cell architec-
ture was maintained, but active cell area was reduced from 100 to
1 mm2: (1) the irradiance at which efficiency peaks increased
from  300 to 1000 suns and (2) peak efficiency rose by a few
percent relative [12–14] (note the corresponding predictions in
Fig. 3a).
In contrast, recent findings [15,16] for thin-film Cu(In,Ga)Se2
(CIGS) photovoltaics indicate that both cell efficiency and the
irradiance at which efficiency peaks increase even as cell size is
reduced to the scale of microns – albeit at flux densities and
efficiencies far below those of the concentrator cells addressed
above. The series resistance of CIGS cells is dominated by the
limited conductivity of the transparent conducting oxide window
layer, so the vertical contribution to series resistance is negligible
compared to the lateral one. However, the vertical component of
series resistance is not negligible in the high-irradiance cells
analyzed here – due to contributions from the tunnel diodes
and the Ge sub-cell – such that miniaturization below 0.1 mm
offers no energetic advantage.
A related issue was whether exploiting micro-concentrators
(flux redistributors that attach to the cell surface and can
completely eliminate grid shadowing losses) to increase metalli-
zation coverage can improve cell efficiency by reducing series
resistance, as posited in Ref. [2]. The non-trivial tradeoff between
the benefit of more front-contact metal (at no shadowing loss)
and the penalty of a larger dark current from the regions beneath
the fingers, as well as the increased current density in the
irradiated strips, was evaluated. Although greater metal coverage
can benefit cm-scale cells, for mm-scale (or smaller) cells, no
energetic benefit was found and, at flux concentration values of
order 103 suns, cell efficiency actually worsens with greater metal
coverage.
Acknowledgment
Baruch Hirsch is the recipient of a Howard and Lisa Wenger
graduate scholarship.
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