Pre-Fabrication Gettering and Hydrogenation Treatments for Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells: A Possible Path to >700 mV Open-Circuit Voltages Using Low-Lifetime Commercial-Grade p-Type Czochralski Silicon

Brett Hallam, Daniel Chen, Jianwei Shi, Roland Einhaus, Zachary C. Holman, Stuart Wenham

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

Pre-fabrication gettering and bulk hydrogenation processes are applied to low-bulk-lifetime (25 μs) p-type Czochralski silicon wafers before silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cell fabrication, resulting in effective minority carrier lifetime enhancements by a factor of six. On complete SHJ solar cells, this translates to an improvement in the open-circuit voltage (VOC) of 71 mV, resulting in VOC values as high as 692 mV. This remarkably high VOC suggests that efficiencies approaching 25% could be possible for low-cost p-type Czochralski silicon wafers – not the typical expensive, high-quality n-type ones with lifetimes of several milliseconds – in the near future. This method is also likely applicable to n-type SHJ solar cells to reduce the incoming wafer lifetime requirements and to other silicon solar cell structures featuring passivated contacts.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number1700221
JournalSolar RRL
Volume2
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2018

Keywords

  • gettering
  • heterojunction
  • hydrogenation
  • p-type Czochralski
  • solar cells

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
  • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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