ENG 10 B-3R

MACAGBA, Jamila Aria G.

2012-13341
August 26, 2015

Singh, R., Alapatt, G. F., & Lakhtakia, A. (2013) Making solar cells a reality
in every home: opportunities and challenges for photovoltaic device design.
IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society, 1(6), 129-144
1. What specific questions were asked?

How to reduce cost of photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation?

How to improve the efficiency of PV electricity generation? Also

improve the efficiency for large adaptation.

Will the use of Cu2O in their proposed two-junction-four-terminal

solar cell be produce the maximum efficiency(44%) that they
obtained despite the previous researches about Cu2O that
resulted to be low efficient?

2. How was the study designed and how does the design of the study
address the question passed?
Previous knowledge on solar cells or PV devices were discusses
such as the upper efficiency limit. Also, to see just how much the
commercialization of solar technology has progresses, the recent
researches were also discussed. Furthermore, guidelines on the
manufacturing were discussed as well as light management for solar
cells. The journal also deliberated the effect of light management on
PV devices. They have also proposed the two-junction-four-terminal
solar cell devices for higher efficiency and lower cost of PV devices.

3. What are the controls for each experiment?

Since approach of this study is more theoretical, not much

experiment was done. Although in their solar-cell computations, I
presume that they controlled their light intensity for each setup
needed.

4. What are the specific results of the study? How convincing are they?
With the proposal to use Cu2O in their proposed solar cell
design, the cost will be reduced due to the low price of Cu2O. The
improvement of efficiency is very dependent on the light management.
In the proposed design, the maximum efficiency was calculated to be
44 % by using solar-cell equations which is very high compared to the
maximum efficiency of the commercialized PV devices at about 25%.
The idea of using Cu2O is good in a sense that is answers the
efficiency and cost problem, however the previous study on its
efficiency is very disappointing. However they were able to show that
the previous results were too lox as compared to the results they were
able to gather.

5. What assumptions were made? Do they seem reasonable?

Since the approach in this study is more on theoretical, the
assumptions or computations made were based on the standard solarcell equations.

6. What contributions does the study make?

Due to the increase in demand of solar technology, this study is
very critical especially because there is a need to find a more ecofriendly source of energy. This study shows how many advancements
are in progress for improving the solar technology in order to answer
the increasing demands for it.

7. What aspects of the original question remained unanswered?

There was not a concrete answer or solution to the problem on
how to improve the efficiency of PV devices and lower its cost.
However, they have discussed on how to answer these problems in the
solar technology, but only theoretically not in the experimental stage.

8. What questions could I ask next?

What other possible material could I use other than Cu2O in

their proposed design?

What other designs that would fully improve the light

management in PV devices?