Front and back surface fields for point-contact solar cells

The authors discuss the use of planar dopant diffusions to reduce surface recombination in point-contact solar cells. These noncurrent collecting diffusions can boost the efficiency of point-contact cells significantly for incident intensities below about 5 suns (0.500 W/cm²). At these low power levels, the surface recombination is the dominant recombination mechanism. Measured values of the emitter saturation current density, J_o, of phosphorus diffusions at the oxidized silicon surface are presented for a range of surface concentrations and furnace conditions on untexturized