Effective Passivation of C-Si by Intrinsic A-Si:h Layer for hit Solar Cells

Authors Shahaji More, R.O. Dusane
Affiliations
Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, 400076, Mumbai, India
Е-mail rodusane@iitb.ac.in
Issue Volume 3, Year 2011, Number 1, Part 5
Dates Received 04 February 2011, published online 08 December 2011
Citation Shahaji More, R.O. Dusane, J. Nano- Electron. Phys. 3 No1, 1120 (2011)
DOI
PACS Number(s) 84.60.Jt, 68.37.Ps
Keywords HIT solar cell (3) , HWCVD (3) , AFM (18) , HF (15) , Amorphous silicon (7) .
Annotation
The influence of HF solution etching on surface roughness of c-Si wafer was investigated using AFM. Ultra thin(2-3 nm) intrinsic a-Si:H is necessary to achieve high VOC and Fill factor, as it effectively passivates the defects on the surface of c-Si and increase tunneling probability of minority charge carriers. However, to achieve control over ultra-thin intrinsic a-Si:H layer thickness and passivation properties, the films were deposited by Hot-wire CVD. We used tantalum filament and silane (SiH4) as a precursor gas, where as the deposition parameter such as filament temperature temperature was varied. The deposition rate, Dark and Photoconductivity were measured for all the films. The optimized intrinsic a-Si:H layer was inserted between p typed doped layers and n type c-Si wafers to fabricate HIT solar cells. The Current-Voltage characteristics were studied to understand the passivation effect of intrinsic layer on c-Si surface. The high saturation current density (Jsat > 10–7 A/cm2) and Ideality factor (n > 2) were observed. We achieved the efficiency of 3.28 % with the optimized intrinsic and doped a-Si:H layers using HWCVD technique.

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