Effect of hydrogen plasma passivation on performance of HIT solar cells

We studied the performance improvement of HIT solar cells by optimizing H2 plasma exposure and deposition of thin a-S:H layer on c-Si. With increasing H2 treatment time, the VOC increases until 80 s and then decreases, indicating the optimum time is 80 s. It is found that the cell performance is almost the same with and without a thin a-Si:H layer when 80 s plasma is treated on the c-Si before i-layer deposition. The conversion efficiency of 14.04% was achieved at the substrate temperature of 160 °C.