Tag Archives: object

Object version

I get the message ‘Error: Object version in file younger than in program version!’. What does this mean?

You are trying to open a configuration which has been generated with a higher version of the software. The program refuses to load the file because this will contain objects which are not supported by your version.

There are 2 solutions: Update your program to the latest version so that you are able to read the file, or ask the producer of the file to generate a version for you which uses the object generation that you have in your software. You can find out about your program version in the ‘About box’ (menu item ?/about).

New wafer object

 

With SPRAY version 2.53 we have introduced a new geometric object called ‘wafer’ which represents a silicon wafer to be used in a solar cell. The wafer has a cylindrical base shape and is cut at the sides:

wafer

The bottom surface is textured with shapes that have been available in previous versions of SPRAY already.

The top surface can be textured the same way or using a new mechanism: In order to approach realistic textures you can now superimpose two textures which may have different shapes and periodicities. This opens a large variety of surface patterns (see examples below).

“Uniform” pyramids

A surface texture of regular pyramids of one and the same size looks like this (for an inclination angle of 54°):

wafer_pyramids_54

The reflectance spectrum in the spectral range 400 … 800 nm is this:

wafer_pyramids_54_spectrum

Average reflectance is 13.8%.

“Non-uniform” pyramids

Big and small pyramids (with different heights and periodicities) mixed together:

wafer_pyramids_small_large

 

Reflectance of this texture:

wafer_pyramids_small_large_spectrum

Average in the range 400 … 800 nm: 13.2%

Big and medium sized pyramids mixed together – this looks quite realistic:

wafer_pyramids_medium_large

 

The reflectance of this kind of texture is this:

wafer_pyramids_medium_large_spectrum

Average reflectance: 13.0%

You may assign different layer stacks to the bottom, side and top surfaces of the wafer object. This way you can introduce AR coatings on top which are not deposited at the sides and below.

Improvements “Multiple spectra view”

Objects of type “Multiple spectra view” do their automatic scaling more clever now, taking into account all active spectra.

These view objects can now be selected by a single mouse click and then scaled using the controls in the status bar, like field view objects. Also the little buttons R (restore graphics), A (automatic scaling) and E (edit graphics parameters) work with these objects.