Corona Charge in SiO2: Kinetics and Surface Passivation for High Efficiency Silicon Solar Cells

Jennison, Nicolas; Clayton-Warwick, Deborah; Collett, Katherine A.; Rands, Lucy; Wilshaw, Peter R.

doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2016.07.090

Cited by 31 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The stability of extrinsic charge, such as corona and/or ionic charge, has only recently been studied. Corona charges have long been known to provide poor stability, which can be moderately improved with a hydrophobic chemical treatment of the interface . Better results have been achieved when large alkali ions are introduced into the dielectric coating as demonstrated with potassium in SiO 2 , thus bringing extrinsic FEP methods closer to practical implementation.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dielectric surface passivation for silicon solar cells: A review

Bonilla

Hoex

Hamer

et al. 2017

Physica Status Solidi (a)

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Silicon wafer solar cells continue to be the leading photovoltaic technology, and in many places are now providing a substantial portion of electricity generation. Further adoption of this technology will require processing that minimises losses in device performance. A fundamental mechanism for efficiency loss is the recombination of photo-generated charge carriers at the unavoidable cell surfaces. Dielectric coatings have been shown to largely prevent these losses through a combination of different passivation mechanisms. This review aims to provide an overview of the dielectric passivation coatings developed in the past two decades using a standardised methodology to characterise the metrics of surface recombination across all techniques and materials. The efficacy of a large set of materials and methods has been evaluated using such metrics and a discussion on the current state and prospects for further surface passivation improvements is provided.

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Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dielectric surface passivation for silicon solar cells: A review

Bonilla

Hoex

Hamer

et al. 2017

Physica Status Solidi (a)

Self Cite

222

161

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“…[42] Here, it is clear that the as remarked in references. [42][43][44] For thermal-ALD TiOx, on the other hand, a shift of +0.55 V cannot be explained by Qit, since it would require an excessively large concentration of negatively charged interface acceptor states, which would increase surface recombination, and it is thus in disagreement with the high lifetime results in Section 3.1. Here it is concluded that up to 0.82 V of shift is produced due to negative charge inside the TiOx film, when accounting for the WF difference.…”

Section: Spv and C-v Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Origin of the tunable carrier selectivity of atomic-layer-deposited TiOx nanolayers in crystalline silicon solar cells

Matsui

Bivour

Ndione

et al. 2020

Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

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Titanium oxide (TiOx) nanolayers grown by atomic layer deposition are investigated with respect to their application as carrier selective contacts for crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells. Although TiOx is known to act as an electron contact, in this work the selectivity of TiOx layers is found to be widely tunable from electron to hole selective depending on deposition conditions, post-deposition treatments, and work function of the metal electrode used. Using TiOx and an intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon buffer layer, solar cell test structure exhibiting open-circuit voltages (Voc) as high as 720 and 650 mV are shown for electron and hole selective contacts, respectively. Surface photovoltage and capacitance-voltage measurements reveal that carrier selectivity is correlated with the amount of c-Si band bending induced by TiOx, which are governed not only by the effective work function difference at the Si/TiOx interface, but also by the negative fixed charge present in the TiOx layer. This new finding is in contrast to the previous model for carrier transport where selectivity is determined only by the asymmetric band offsets at the Si/contact interface. It highlights the influence of induced band bending to produce carrier depletion/inversion conditions, and the importance of its selectivity effect in a c-Si absorber.

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“…In order to characterize the quality of the interface, effective lifetimes were recorded as the surface charge was modified using corona charging in a point-to-plane set-up with a 30 kV bias and 10 s intervals [17,18]. The resulting surface potentials were measured using Kelvin Probe.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A novel source of atomic hydrogen for passivation of defects in silicon

Hamer

Bourret‐Sicotte

Martins

et al. 2017

Physica Rapid Research Ltrs

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Palladium membranes have been used for decades for the separation of hydrogen from other gasses. In this letter the use of thin palladium leaves to act as sources of atomic hydrogen for silicon samples is explored. It has been assumed in the past that although hydrogen diffuses through palladium in atomic form, the atoms recombine to form molecular hydrogen at the surface. In this letter it is shown that hydrogen supplied to one surface of a palladium leaf can result in atomic hydrogen being released from the opposite surface at low pressure. This is demonstrated through the use of a palladium leaf in a direct plasma system which allows for atomic hydrogen to be supplied to a sample while avoiding exposure to UV radiation from the plasma and high energy charged particles. This method is shown to provide significant atomic hydrogen to silicon samples and improve passivation of silicon surfaces. Method of Shielded Hydrogen Passivation: Schematic of direct plasma chamber with a shield inserted between the plasma and the silicon sample.

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Corona Charge in SiO2: Kinetics and Surface Passivation for High Efficiency Silicon Solar Cells

Cited by 31 publications

References 18 publications

Dielectric surface passivation for silicon solar cells: A review

Dielectric surface passivation for silicon solar cells: A review

Origin of the tunable carrier selectivity of atomic-layer-deposited TiOx nanolayers in crystalline silicon solar cells

A novel source of atomic hydrogen for passivation of defects in silicon

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