Microcrystalline silicon solar cells with passivated interfaces for high open‐circuit voltage

E-ISSN： 1862-6319|212|4|840-845

ISSN： 1862-6300

Source： PHYSICA STATUS SOLIDI (A) APPLICATIONS AND MATERIALS SCIENCE, Vol.212, Iss.4, 2015-04, pp. : 840-845

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Abstract

We introduce passivating hetero‐interfaces in single‐junction microcrystalline silicon (μc‐Si:H) solar cells. We investigate the effect of different i–n layer stacks in thin μc‐Si:H devices, in which recombination is significant at the interfaces as well as in the bulk material. By applying amorphous silicon passivating layers at the μc‐Si:H i–n interface, we show a device with a high open‐circuit voltage (Voc) of 608 mV, for a standard Raman crystalline fraction of the i‐layer (>50%). This Voc is the highest reported value for a state‐of‐the‐art μc‐Si:H device made by plasma‐enhanced chemical vapor deposition. We also report an efficiency of 9.45% for a solar cell with an absorber layer as thin as 650 nm on an area greater than 1 cm2, and show with a simple crystalline silicon model that for such thin μc‐Si:H devices or μc‐Si:H devices with a very high bulk‐material quality, well‐mastered interfaces and doped layers are of paramount importance for high efficiency.