Surface passivation of n-type c-Si wafers by a-Si/SiO2/SiNx stack with &amp;lt;1 cm/s effective surface recombination velocity

Herasimenka, Stanislau; Tracy, Clarence; Sharma, Vivek; Vulic, Natasa; Dauksher, William J.; Bowden, Stuart

doi:10.1063/1.4827821

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…It is clear that the results in this work are the among lowest recombination observed for a 1 Ω cm ⟨100⟩ Si surface. Similarly low surface recombination was reported by Herasimenka in 2013 yet their work was done on higher resistivity silicon. Additionally, the oxide and nitride layers here reported were deposited using an in‐line industrial system.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 76%

Extremely low surface recombination in 1 Ω cm n‐type monocrystalline silicon

Reichel

Hermle

Wilshaw

2016

Physica Rapid Research Ltrs

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A key requirement in the recent development of highly efficient silicon solar cells is the outstanding passivation of their surfaces. In this work, plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition of a triple layer dielectric consisting of amorphous silicon, silicon oxide and silicon nitride, charged extrinsically using corona, has been used to demonstrate extremely low surface recombination. Assuming Richter's parametrisation for bulk lifetime, an effective surface recombination velocity Seff = 0.1 cm/s at Δn = 1015 cm–3 has been obtained for planar, float zone, n -type, 1 Ω cm silicon. This equates to a saturation current density J0s = 0.3 fA/cm2, and a 1-sun implied open-circuit voltage of 738 mV. These surface recombination parameters are among the lowest reported for 1 Ω cm c-Si. A combination of impedance spectroscopy and corona-lifetime measurements shows that the outstanding chemical passivation is due to the small hole capture cross section for states at the interface between the Si and a-Si layer which are hydrogenated during nitride deposition

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 76%

Extremely low surface recombination in 1 Ω cm n‐type monocrystalline silicon

Reichel

Hermle

Wilshaw

2016

Physica Rapid Research Ltrs

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“…The lowest observed recombination at the a‐Si/c‐Si interface has been that reported by Herasimenka et al and Bonilla et al . Herasimenka demonstrated SRVs of 0.086 cm s −1 in 1.7 Ωcm n‐type Si, while Bonilla achieved 0.06 cm s −1 in 1 Ωcm n‐type Si.…”

Section: Materials and Methods For Silicon Surface Passivationmentioning

confidence: 71%

Dielectric surface passivation for silicon solar cells: A review

Bonilla

Hoex

Hamer

et al. 2017

Physica Status Solidi (a)

214

161

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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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“…15,[36][37] Intrinsic a-Si:H has been demonstrated to provide a high quality passivation of c-Si surfaces. [38][39][40][41][42] This is attributable to a very low defect density at the a-Si:H/c-Si interface, assisted in part by the high concentration (~10-20% atomic) of hydrogen incorporated into the films, which migrates to the interface and passivates remaining c-Si dangling bonds. [43][44][45] As shown in Figure 3(a), upon the insertion of a 6.5nm-thick a-Si:H layer between MgF 2 and n-Si, the surface passivation quality is markedly enhanced, yielding more than two orders of magnitude improvement in carrier lifetime, from 15 µs to 4088 µs.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Magnesium Fluoride Electron-Selective Contacts for Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

Wan

Samundsett

Bullock

et al. 2016

ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces

193

187

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In this study, we present a novel application of thin magnesium fluoride films to form electron-selective contacts to n-type crystalline silicon (c-Si). This allows the demonstration of a 20.1%-efficient c-Si solar cell. The electron-selective contact is composed of deposited layers of amorphous silicon (∼6.5 nm), magnesium fluoride (∼1 nm), and aluminum (∼300 nm). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals a work function of 3.5 eV at the MgF2/Al interface, significantly lower than that of aluminum itself (∼4.2 eV), enabling an Ohmic contact between the aluminum electrode and n-type c-Si. The optimized contact structure exhibits a contact resistivity of ∼76 mΩ·cm(2), sufficiently low for a full-area contact to solar cells, together with a very low contact recombination current density of ∼10 fA/cm(2). We demonstrate that electrodes functionalized with thin magnesium fluoride films significantly improve the performance of silicon solar cells. The novel contacts can potentially be implemented also in organic optoelectronic devices, including photovoltaics, thin film transistors, or light emitting diodes.

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Surface passivation of n-type c-Si wafers by a-Si/SiO2/SiNx stack with <1 cm/s effective surface recombination velocity

Cited by 23 publications

References 26 publications

Extremely low surface recombination in 1 Ω cm n‐type monocrystalline silicon

Extremely low surface recombination in 1 Ω cm n‐type monocrystalline silicon

Dielectric surface passivation for silicon solar cells: A review

Magnesium Fluoride Electron-Selective Contacts for Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

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