A comparison study of boron emitter passivation by silicon oxide and a PECVD silicon nitride stack

Efficient silicon nitride SiNx:H antireflective and passivation layers deposited by atmospheric pressure PECVD for silicon solar cells

“…Since the eighties, hydrogenated silicon nitride SiN x :H thin films (abbreviated to SiN x in the following) have become essential for the crystalline silicon (Si) photovoltaic industry . Indeed, SiN x layers obtained by low pressure plasma‐enhanced chemical vapor deposition (LP‐PECVD) at low temperature (≤400°C) are almost exclusively used as antireflective coatings (ARC) for current mainstream Al‐BSF Si solar cells as well as for the strongly emerging solar cell architectures such as passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC), passivated emitter and rear totally diffused cells (PERT), or interdigitated back contact (IBC) solar cells . In addition to almost ideal optical properties, a major strength of SiN x films is their remarkable passivation properties.…”

Industrially Viable Diffused Ibc Solar Cells Using Apcvd Dopant Glass Layers

“…Complete APCVD precursors have shown the best passivation quality among all the groups, with mean iV oc of 714 mV and J 0s as low as 17 fA/ cm 2 . Such high passivation quality is generally observed in solar cells endowed with carrier-selective junctions [33,34]. The excellent passivation quality of complete APCVD precursors is attributed to the high quality of the APCVD dopant glasses, the difference in electrical properties such as sheet resistance and surface dopant concentrations, and the difference in sample preparation and the optimized…”

“…Hence, we have demonstrated that by using a single HF etching step (in this case of 145 s) for our annealed doped glass layers, we can completely get rid of both BSG and PSG by using their selective etching compared to in-situ grown SiO 2 in HF solution. Mojrova et al [33] have demonstrated that for the optimal passivation quality of the SiO 2 /SiN x passivation stack, we need at least 10 nm of the SiO 2 and a SiN x layer with a low refractive index. Hence in this work, the etching time was adjusted such that at least 10 nm of the in-situ grown silicon oxide remained on the doped c-Si surface.…”