PECVD amorphous silicon suboxide films for surface passivation of silicon solar cells

Author

Jia, Guang-Zhi ; Liu, Hong-Gang ; Chang, Hu-Dong

Author_Institution

Inst. of Microelectron., Chinese Acad. of Sci., Beijing, China

fYear

2010

Firstpage

2013

Lastpage

2015

Abstract

The surface passivation properties of hydrogenated amorphous silicon suboxides (a-SiO_x:H) deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) have been investigated. The process gases were nitrous oxide and a mixture of silane and helium at a deposition temperature of ~250 °C. Minority carrier lifetimes up to 270 us on 4·Ω·cm p-type float-zone silicon wafers were obtained. With thermal annealing, the carrier lifetimes of the a-SiO_x:H passivated silicon wafers exceed 670 us, correlating to surface recombination velocities of 30 cm/s. Optical analysis revealed a distinct decrease of light absorption in the a-SiOx:H films compared to commonly used intrinsic amorphous silicon passivation used in heterojunction solar cells.

Keywords

plasma CVD; silicon; solar cells; PECVD amorphous silicon suboxide films; Si; heterojunction solar cells; hydrogenated amorphous silicon suboxides; optical analysis; plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition; silicon solar cells; silicon wafers; surface passivation; surface recombination velocities; thermal annealing; Absorption; Amorphous silicon; Annealing; Films; Passivation; Photovoltaic cells;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology (ICSICT), 2010 10th IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Shanghai

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5797-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSICT.2010.5667876

Filename

5667876