Dopant‐free carrier‐selective contacts have drawn intensive attention for efficient crystalline silicon (c‐Si) photovoltaics due to the low‐temperature simple process and better carrier selectivity. By incorporating a thermally evaporated dielectric film cerium fluoride (CeF3) as the electron transport layer (ETL) between a c‐Si(n) and aluminum (Al) electrode, higher conversion efficiency of the crystalline silicon solar cell is obtained, which is 21.27% compared to 16.89% of a reference cell without CeF3. The insertion of an ultrathin CeF3 ETL helps in alleviating the strong Fermi‐level pinning at the interface, leading to better electron transport with a low contact resistivity of 10.96 mΩ cm2. The morphology and element distribution of the interface are also investigated by high‐resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The primary results demonstrate that the utilization of kinds of lanthanide fluorides, including CeF3, offers a good choice for efficient and cost‐effective electron‐selective contacts for optical–electrical devices.
Crystalline silicon solar cells produced by doping processes have intrinsic shortages of high Auger recombination and/or severe parasitic optical absorption. Dopant-free carrier-selective contacts (DF-CSCs) are alternative routines for the next generation of highly efficient solar cells. However, it is difficult to achieve both good passivating and low contact resistivity for most DF-CSCs. In this paper, a high-quality dopant-free electron-selective passivating contact made from ultra-low concentration water solution is reported. Both low recombination current (J0) ~10 fA/cm2 and low contact resistivity (ρc) ~31 mΩ·cm2 are demonstrated with this novel contact on intrinsic amorphous silicon thin film passivated n-Si. The electron selectivity is attributed to relieving of the interfacial Fermi level pinning because of dielectric properties (decaying of the metal-induced gap states (MIGS)). The full-area implementation of the novel passivating contact shows 20.4% efficiency on a prototype solar cell without an advanced lithography process. Our findings offer a very simple, cost-effective, and efficient solution for future semiconductor devices, including photovoltaics and thin-film transistors.
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