Micromorph

The artificial word micromorph is a combination of the words MICROcrystalline and aMORPHous, which has been first used for a stacked thin-film silicon solar cell consisting of an amorphous silicon absorber for the blue light and a microcrystalline silicon absorber for the red and near-infrared light of the solar spectrum. This artificial word has first been mentioned in a scientific publication of the University of Neuchâtel research group of Prof. Arvind Shah by the author J. Meier in the year 1995 [1], but is based on long pioneering research of several authors and of several years. For a detailed list of publications, see the two main research group's publications website under http://pvlab.epfl.ch and under http://www.fz-juelich.de/ief/ief-5/publicger/

Years later, other European, Japanese and American research groups started research activities in the field of improving the conversion efficiency of thin-film silicon solar cells by utilizing the stacked solar cell concept, naming the micromorph device 'hybrid' solar cell or naming the microcrystalline silicon absorber 'nanocrystalline' or even 'policrystalline' silicon. The word 'micromorph' has been lately claimed to belong to a equipment manufacturer of silicon coating tools, but in a patent judgement, this claim has not been accepted by European patent offices [2].

References

[1] J. Meier, S. Dubail, D. Fischer, J. A. Anna Selvan, N. Pellaton Vaucher, R. Platz, C. Hof, R. Flückiger, U. Kroll, N. Wyrsch, P. Torres, H. Keppner, A. Shah, K.-D. Ufert, "The 'Micromorph' Solar Cells: a New Way to High Efficiency Thin Film Silicon Solar Cells", Proceedings of the 13th EC Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference, Nice, October 1995, pp. 1445–1450.

[2] O. Papathanasiou, "A good day for Ms. Schönefeld-Schnuck PI 5/2009 page 44", http://www.op-solar.de/pdfs/A%20good%20day%20for%20Schoenefeld-Schnuck.pdf