Received May 10, 2020, accepted July 17, 2020, date of publication July 29, 2020, date of current version August 10, 2020. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3012657 Physically Based Analytical Model of Heavily Doped Silicon Wafers Based Proposed Solar Cell Microstructure MARWA S. SALEM 1,2 , ABDULLAH J. ALZAHRANI 1 , RABIE A. RAMADAN 1,3 , (Member, IEEE), ADWAN ALANAZI 1 , AHMED SHAKER 4 , MOHAMED ABOUELATTA 5 , CHRISTIAN GONTRAND 6,7 , MOHAMMED ELBANNA 4 , AND ABDELHALIM ZEKRY 5 1 Department of Computer Engineering, College of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Ha’il, Ha’il 2440, Saudi Arabia 2 Department of Electrical Communication and Electronics Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Modern Science and Arts University, Cairo 12585, Egypt 3 Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Cairo 12613, Egypt 4 Department of Engineering Physics and Mathematics, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11517, Egypt 5 Department of Electronics and Communications, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11517, Egypt 6 INSA Lyon, 69621 Villeurbanne, France 7 IEP, INSA, Université Euro-méditerranéenne de Fès, 30000 Fez, Morocco Corresponding author: Rabie A. Ramadan (rabie@rabieramadan.org) This work was supported the Deanship of Scientific Research at the University of Hail under Research Group Project number : RG-191279. ABSTRACT In this paper, an analytical model of a proposed low-cost high efficiency NPN silicon-based solar cell structure is presented. The structure is based on using low cost heavily doped commercially available silicon wafers and proposed to be fabricated by the same steps as the conventional solar cells except an extra deep trench etch step. Moreover, the cell has been engineered to react to the UV spectrum, resulting in a greater conversion performance. The presented analytical model takes the electrical and optical characteristics into account. Thus, the influence of both physical and technological parameters on the structure performance could be easily examined. Consequently, the optimization of the structure performance becomes visible. To inspect the validity of the analytical model, a comparison of the main performance parameters resulting from the model results with TCAD simulations is carried out, showing good agreement. INDEX TERMS Low cost, high efficiency, high-doped wafers, solar cell, analytical model. I. INTRODUCTION Recently, thin film solar cells have been presented as com- petitors to the single crystal silicon solar cells due to their low cost and their rapid efficiency improvement [1]. However, thin film solar cells technology has some limitations like the difficulty of absorbing longer wavelengths of the light spectrum due to their small thickness of the active layer [2], toxic materials involved and stability issues [3]. So, this technology still requires more research before it can be made commercially available. Accordingly, silicon is still the main material used in PV applications due to efficient, reliable and stable solar cells produced from silicon. Actually, silicon-based solar cell technology constitutes about 90% of the solar PV market due to the intensive efforts being led by the microelectronic industry. However, the cost of the high efficiency planar solar cell is still high and much more expensive than the thin film technologies [4], [5]. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Huiqing Wen . Still, few research works have been done to fabricate silicon-based solar cells in a cheap way with relatively high efficiency [6]–[9]. One of the most interesting attempts to get high efficiency low cost silicon-based cells is to use a nanorod with a high-doped pn junction in the radial direction [10], [11]. The visibility of this nanorod solar cell involves creating a dense array of well-oriented nanorods, each with a pn junction, which is difficult to be fabricated. Efforts are still in progress to raise efficiency while keeping low-cost cells to meet the high demand of the industry [12], [13]. In order to produce low-cost solar cells, a low-cost substrate may be used. However, using these inexpensive absorbers results in a high density of defects or a large degree of impurity. This, in turn, reduces the diffusion length of the low minority carrier [14], [15]. Using such low diffusion length materials as the base of planar solar cell limits carrier collection by minority carrier diffusion. As a result, the cell performance is degraded. The solution to such a problem is achieved by generating electron-hole 138898 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ VOLUME 8, 2020