Reactive ion etched black silicon texturing: A comparative study

Allen, Thomas G.; Bullock, James; Cuevas, Andrés; Baker-Finch, Simeon C.; Karouta, F.

doi:10.1109/pvsc.2014.6924983

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…8 Due to this field-effect, very low surface recombination rates have been reported for lowly doped b-Si, even lower than what could expected on the basis of the large b-Si surface area. [6][7][8]13 As result, interdigitated back contact solar cells with a conversion efficiency of 22.1% have recently been demonstrated with the lowly p-type doped b-Si front surface being passivated by ALD Al 2 O 3 . 2 Even though Al 2 O 3 provides excellent passivation of lowly doped b-Si, standard industrially produced solar cell architectures, such as the aluminum back surface field (Al-BSF) cell and passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC), fundamentally rely on a heavily n-type doped Si front surface.…”

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confidence: 99%

Surface passivation of n-type doped black silicon by atomic-layer-deposited SiO2/Al2O3 stacks

Loo

Ingenito

Verheijen

et al. 2017

Applied Physics Letters

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Black silicon (b-Si) nanotextures can significantly enhance the light absorption of crystalline silicon solar cells. Nevertheless, for a successful application of b-Si textures in industrially relevant solar cell architectures, it is imperative that charge-carrier recombination at particularly highly n-type doped black Si surfaces is further suppressed. In this work, this issue is addressed through systematically studying lowly and highly doped b-Si surfaces, which are passivated by atomic-layer-deposited Al2O3 films or SiO2/Al2O3 stacks. In lowly doped b-Si textures, a very low surface recombination prefactor of 16 fA/cm2 was found after surface passivation by Al2O3. The excellent passivation was achieved after a dedicated wet-chemical treatment prior to surface passivation, which removed structural defects which resided below the b-Si surface. On highly n-type doped b-Si, the SiO2/Al2O3 stacks result in a considerable improvement in surface passivation compared to the Al2O3 single layers. The atomic-layer-deposited SiO2/Al2O3 stacks therefore provide a low-temperature, industrially viable passivation method, enabling the application of highly n- type doped b-Si nanotextures in industrial silicon solar cells.

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confidence: 99%

Surface passivation of n-type doped black silicon by atomic-layer-deposited SiO2/Al2O3 stacks

Loo

Ingenito

Verheijen

et al. 2017

Applied Physics Letters

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“…Extracting S textured from the stabilized lifetime data results in values close to S planar (10.6 cm s −1 ) only for t RIE of 1.5 and 2 min (12.9 and 13.6 cm s −1 , respectively). We note that texturing with ICP for 3 min or shorter times in our equipment results in S textured values (before degradation) on par with or even better than the state‐of‐the‐art for p‐type CZ (11 cm s −1 in the review by Otto et al, 20 cm s −1 in the record b‐Si cells by Savin et al and 10 cm s −1 reported by Allen et al). This indicates potential for further efficiency improvements of b‐Si solar cells made by RIE texturing, if CCP is omitted from the texturing process.…”

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confidence: 46%

Black Silicon With Ultra‐Low Surface Recombination Velocity Fabricated by Inductively Coupled Power Plasma

Iandolo

Nery

Davidsen

et al. 2018

Physica Rapid Research Ltrs

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Black silicon is a naturally antireflective Si surface with great potential for high‐efficiency solar cells. In particular, black silicon surfaces can be obtained using reactive ion etch in a maskless, single‐step process regardless of crystallinity and with minimal material loss. Surface damage from the etching process, however, result in surfaces with high recombination velocity, thus limiting solar cell efficiency. We have developed a method to texture Si surfaces using non‐cryogenic reactive ion etch with a plasma sustained exclusively by inductively coupled power, thereby minimizing surface damage. We achieved a target reflectance of 3% or lower in the wavelength range 300–1000 nm after an etch time of 2 min. Surfaces coated with Al2O3 deposited by atomic layer deposition showed recombination velocity as low as 6.9 cm s−1 on p‐type Czochralski wafers, almost the same values as measured on planar reference surfaces (6.8 cm s−1). This corresponds to an implied open circuit voltage as high as 757 mV for a cell with thickness of 180 μm and base resistivity of 4 Ω cm. These results indicate that our method for texturing of Si surfaces is suitable for fabrication of high‐efficiency single junction Si solar cells.

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“…Compared to the typical front surface reflectance of ∼ 2 and ∼ 8 %, from conventionally textured mono- [8] 5 and multi-crystalline [9] Si solar cells, respectively, nanoscale texturing such as described in [10,11,12] offers a potential of improved power conversion efficiency for Si solar cells due to reduced reflectance loss.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black silicon laser-doped selective emitter solar cell with 18.1% efficiency

Davidsen

et al. 2016

Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

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We report fabrication of nanostructured, laser-doped selective emitter (LDSE) silicon solar cells with power conversion efficiency of 18.1 % and a fill factor (FF) of 80.1 %. The nanostructured solar cells were realized through a single step, mask-less, scalable reactive ion etch (RIE) texturing of the surface. The selective emitter was formed by means of laser doping using a continuous wave (CW) laser and subsequent contact formation using light-induced plating of Ni and Cu. The combination of RIE-texturing and a LDSE cell design has to our knowledge not been demonstrated previously. The resulting efficiency indicates a promising potential, especially considering that the cell reported in this work is the first proof-of-concept and that the fabricated cell is not fully optimized in terms of plating, emitter sheet resistance and surface passivation. Due to the scalable nature and simplicity of RIE-texturing as well as the LDSE process, we consider this specific combination a promising candidate for a cost-efficient process for future Si solar cells.

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Reactive ion etched black silicon texturing: A comparative study

Cited by 10 publications

References 15 publications

Surface passivation of n-type doped black silicon by atomic-layer-deposited SiO2/Al2O3 stacks

Surface passivation of n-type doped black silicon by atomic-layer-deposited SiO2/Al2O3 stacks

Black Silicon With Ultra‐Low Surface Recombination Velocity Fabricated by Inductively Coupled Power Plasma

Black silicon laser-doped selective emitter solar cell with 18.1% efficiency

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