Liquid-phase crystallized silicon absorber layers have been applied in heterojunction solar cells on glass substrates with 10.8% conversion efficiency and an open-circuit voltage of 600 mV. Intermediate layers of SiO x , SiN x , and SiO x N y , as well as the a-Si:H precursor layer, were deposited on 30 cm × 30 cm glass substrates using industrial-type plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition equipment. After crystallization on 3 cm × 5 cm area using a continuous-wave infrared laser line, the resulting polysilicon material showed high material quality with large grain sizes. Index Terms-Heterojunction, liquid-phase crystallization, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), thin-film silicon.

Thin crystalline silicon solar cells prepared directly on glass substrates by means of liquid-phase crystallization of the absorber utilize only a small fraction of the silicon material used by standard wafer-based silicon solar cells. The material consists of large crystal grains of up to square centimeter area and results in solar cells with open-circuit voltages of 650 mV, which is comparable with results achieved with multi-crystalline silicon wafers. We give a brief status update and present new results on the electronic interface and bulk properties. The interrelation between surface passivation and additional hydrogen plasma passivation is investigated for p-type and n-type absorbers with different doping concentrations. Internal quantum efficiency measurements from both sides on bifacial solar cells are used to extract the bulk-diffusion length and surface-recombination velocity. Finally, we compare various types of solar cell devices based on 10 μm thin crystalline silicon, where conversion efficiencies of 11-12% were achieved with p-type and n-type liquid-phase crystallized absorbers on glass.

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