Recombination behavior and contact resistance of n+ and p+ poly-crystalline Si/mono-crystalline Si junctions

Phosphorus-diffused polysilicon contacts for solar cells

“…On the other hand, the application of SiO 2 models gives a thickness of 1.8 nm. In this work, we have chosen 1.4 nm, since it matches the thickness of silicon oxide film similarly prepared in previous works [13,17,22]. The thermal oxides were grown on cleaned substrates in a quartz tube furnace in pure oxygen.…”

“…A thermionic diffusion model has also been proposed for characterizing hole transport in a polysilicon emitter [10,11,12]. On the other hand, failure to achieve improved performance has been explained by the phenomenon of interfacial oxide layer break up, as observed by high resolution transmission electron microscopy [4,8,[13][14][15][16] and quantitatively confirmed by contact resistivity measurements. Recently an analytical model has been developed based on the possibility that dopants penetrate through pinholes in the oxide, creating localized highly doped regions in the crystalline silicon; current crowding associated to those local contact regions could then explain both a low minority carrier recombination and a low majority carrier resistivity [16].…”

“…Other studies of ion implanted and thermally activated polysilicon layers have demonstrated very low recombination current densities J 0 ∼1 fA/cm 2 for n þ polysilicon and ∼4.4 fA/cm 2 for p þ polysilicon [19,20], which shows the great potential of doped polysilicon as a passivated contact for solar cells. In addition to in-situ doping or ion implantation, conventional thermal diffusion can be used to dope the polysilicon [13], with the added advantage of being a well-established process in the solar cell industry.…”

Optical Evaluation of the Rear Contacts of Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells by Coupled Electromagnetic and Statistical Ray-Optics Modeling

“…electron-and hole-collecting contacts [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. The principal aim of such contacts is selective collection of one type of carrier, while avoiding recombination of the opposite carrier type [1,2].…”

Silicon nitride/silicon oxide interlayers for solar cell passivating contacts based on PECVD amorphous silicon

“…In recent years, this contact system has been revisited as a passivating contact technology for silicon solar cells [4][5][6]. Studies of polysilicon emitter BJT have demonstrated that the interfacial layer plays a critical role for the enhanced performance [3,7,8].…”