Week 11: Annotated Bibliography

Week Eleven Assignment

List your research question

What is the efficiency of energy storage from PV solar cells, and how is it measured?

Provide your citation in APA style

Schindler, F., Michl, B., Kleiber, A., Steinkemper, H., Schon, J., Kwapil, W., . . . Schubert, M. C. (2015). Potential Gain in Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cell Efficiency by n-Type Doping. IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, 5(2), 499-506.

Descriptive

• Theme: the central focus of this article is taking two types of multicrystalline solar cells and testing them under the same conditions in order to determine their efficiencies by a process called ELBA, or efficiency limiting bulk recombination analysis. The two types are either n-type, or p-type—meaning they are silicon based solar cells doped with more positive electrons, or electron holes. Although this compares two types of PV cells, it actually answers a larger question of whether or not solar cells can be efficient enough for large scale and cheap use.

• Audience: The intended audience is not just a general audience. It is very specific to engineers who already understand terms like resistivity, n-type, p-type, etc. This can also be noted because it’s written in an IEEE specific format.

Evaluative:

• Credibility/Authority: This IEEE article was written by 10 different authors. All of these authors have PhD’s in either Solar Energy Systems, Silicon Photovoltaics, Materials Physics, Solid State Physics, etc. Four of these authors actually worked together on other projects.

• Accuracy: This specific article is actually a collaboration amongst German scientists and doctors who have dedicated their lives to photovoltaics. The collaboration, the author credibility, and the data are all reasons why I trust the information provided.

• Reliability/Objectivity: This article was published in the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, which takes many revisions and edits to come to point of publication. Also, there are 27 references and citations for this article.

• Relevance: This specific article relates to my topic directly, because it more so focuses on efficiency and how it’s measured. It slightly deviates when discussing the two types of PV solar cells, but still answers the question thoroughly, through efficiency gain, comparison charts, and data processes.

• Currency: Given that it was published in 2015, it’s currency is still applicable to this field of research.

• Scope and purpose: The article describes its scope through an introduction, its materials and methods used, results, and a conclusion. It follows a more accurate pattern of lab reports that I have been doing in the course of my current semester, which makes the research more relevant and helpful. On top of that, the purpose is to do a basic analysis of the two materials and in the end shows how n-type materials are more efficient. This again correlates with what I have been studying.