High‐Efficiency Nanostructured Silicon Solar Cells on a Large Scale Realized Through the Suppression of Recombination Channels

Abstract

Nanostructured silicon solar cells show great potential for new-generation photovoltaics due to their ability to approach ideal light-trapping. However, the nanofeatured morphology that brings about the optical benefits also introduces new recombination channels, and severe deterioration in the electrical performance even outweighs the gain in optics in most attempts. This Research News article aims to review the recent progress in the suppression of carrier recombination in silicon nanostructures, with the emphasis on the optimization of surface morphology and controllable nanostructure height and emitter doping concentration, as well as application of dielectric passivation coatings, providing design rules to realize high-efficiency nanostructured silicon solar cells on a large scale.

Realization of Quasi‐Omnidirectional Solar Cells with Superior Electrical Performance by All‐Solution‐Processed Si Nanopyramids

“…Despite the optical advantage, the conversion efficiencies (ηs) of the most reported Si nanostructures‐textured solar cells were not improved as expected, the reason behind which is the degradation of electrical property incurred from the accelerated carrier recombination 11, 21. Because Si nanostructures such as nanopores, nanowires, nanoholes, nanowells, and nanopillars generally have large surface area enhancement and their surface is hard to be perfectly passivated by dielectric thin films, the photongenerated carriers are easily recombined through the dangling bonds on the unpassivated surface and thus surface recombination dramatically increases.…”

“…Nevertheless, when compared to their conventional SiMPs‐textured counterparts, the nanostructures‐textured solar cells still suffer from higher carrier recombination and thus have lower open‐circuit voltage ( V OC ). In fact, besides utilizing outstanding passivation layers, developing Si nanostructures with low surface enhancement is also an effective approach to reduce carrier recombination 21. On this aspect, Si nanopyramids (SiNPs) have extremely attracted interests due to the fact that they have low surface enhancement, while excellent antireflection and light trapping effect are retained 24, 25, 26, 27.…”

Localized Surface Plasmon Induced Position‐Sensitive Photodetection in Silicon‐Nanowire‐Modified Ag/Si

“…One is the structure modification with specific morphology. For example, nanoporous silicon pillar arrays and silicon nanowires are chose to gain high absorbance due to the large specific surface area, and nanopyramids have outstanding ability to enhance light trapping . On the other hand, approaches based on surface plasmon, coherent delocalized electron oscillations at the interface between a metal and a dielectric, have sprung up to realize light trapping and efficiency improvement .…”

Optimization of the Surface Structure on Black Silicon for Surface Passivation

“…In order to improve the efficiency of solar cells, b-Si needs excellent surface passivation [11]. Although a wide variety of films can be selected, such as SiN x [12] and SiO 2 [13], the Al 2 O 3 thin film deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) is the best choice for passivating b-Si [14].…”