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<p>The design and optimization of higher efficiency Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS) solar cells are investigated in this thesis. Optimizing the thickness layers of a cell for various band gaps was conducted in order to design a cell that exceeds the current industry efficiency record of 20.8%. Silvaco provides a modeling program called ATLAS that is specifically designed to model semiconductor devices. ATLAS was used to model a CIGS cell that is currently being produced to verify the validity of the model. Various thicknesses were then swept to determine the optimum thickness for a given band gap. Solar spectrum intensity varies by location around the Earth. Optimizing CIGS cells for various band gaps yields higher overall power output when dealing with drastic climate and location variations. Cells for five band gaps ranging from 1.14 eV to 1.69 eV were optimized in this thesis. The highest achieved efficiency was for a band gap of 1.69 eV with an overall theoretical efficiency of 22.4%.
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<br>Subjects: CIGS; efficiency; optimization; thickness; band gap; Silvaco; ATLAS</div>
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Columbus, Douglas A.</div>
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