Impact of surface preparation prior to Al2O3 deposition for i-PERC cells

Author

Penaud, J. ; Jaffrennou, P. ; Rothschild, A. ; Lombardet, B.

Author_Institution

TOTAL - Gas & Power - R&D Div., Paris, France

fYear

2012

fDate

3-8 June 2012

Abstract

The trend of the photovoltaic industry consisting in decreasing the wafer thickness leads to the strengthening of the requirements related to surface passivation. AlOx is known to be a promising candidate to fulfill these requirements by combining chemical and field effect passivation. However, Al₂O₃ is not implemented in production yet since its integration still faces some issues (aging, thermal stability blisters...). This work focuses on the impact of the surface preparation prior to the AlOx deposition.. We show that HNO₃-based cleans are the most suitable for AlOx passivation for a further integration in an industrial solar cell process flow.

Keywords

aluminium compounds; hydrogen compounds; passivation; solar cells; surface cleaning; Al₂O₃; HNO₃; field effect passivation; i-PERC cells; passivated emitter and rear contact; photovoltaic industry; solar cell process; surface preparation; wafer thickness; Aluminum oxide; Cleaning; Firing; Passivation; Photovoltaic cells; Silicon; AlOx passivation; Atomic Layer Deposition; PERC solar cells; nitric acid; surface preparation;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2012 38th IEEE

Conference_Location

Austin, TX

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0064-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2012.6317791

Filename

6317791