Single-crystal Si infrared improvements

Previous modeling and experiments have demonstrated that a considerable increase in Si single-crystal single-junction solar cell performance should be possible in the infrared range with a buried amorphized substructure such as an L-H complex interface inserted in the cell emitter. We analyze the activity of the main post-implantation defects, namely divacancies and band-tails, in a buried nanolayer in the presence of an active interface. The infrared carrier generation has been investigated on specially designed samples which contain flat-pearly shaped amorphized layers buried near the textured front face. Particularly, a shift of the divacancy activity band in the local strain field has been observed. The 1800 nm divacancy infrared band activity has revealed a totally unknown behavior in a built-in strain field of the inserted a-Si/c-Si hetero-interface. A relatively important infrared current could be observed experimentally up to 2500 nm