Hierarchical Classification of the Photovoltaic Materials by Data Analysis Method

Abstract

In Photovoltaic, many semiconductors materials are used. These materials possess different optical, electrical and mechanical properties. However, the present technologies used in the solar cell manufacture, depend essentially for the material and impose an elevated price. Therefore, the choice of the material is very important and should be developed very finely. In this paper, we first present the theory of some important photovoltaic materials, than secondly, we developed a statistical analysis method. This method allows to class hierarchically the different photovoltaic materials (Si, GaAs, CdTe, CdSe, InP...). In this method, the influence of the physical and technological parameters such as the bandgap, the carrier lifetime, the carrier mobility, the coefficient of reflection…are taken into account in order to analyze the related importance of each parameter on the hierarchical classification. This method is based on the ordinal statistical analysis of the data, called Analysis in Principal Component (A.P.C). The photovoltaic data are taken from the recent literature and are represented on tables. A graphic visualization of this classification is presented while using the factorial analysis.