Effective Antireflection And Surface Passivation Of Silicon Using A Sio2/A-T Iox Film Stack

Keywords

Antireflection dielectric coating; field effect; silicon solar cells; surface passivation

Abstract

This paper reports an effective and industrially relevant passivation and antireflection film stack featuring a 10 nm silicon dioxide (SiO2) film followed by a 65 nm amorphous titanium oxide (a-TiOx) film. This film stack has equivalent optical performance to a single-layer silicon nitride (SiN x) antireflection coating (ARC) for unencapsulated cells, and slightly better performance for encapsulated cells (0.2 mA⋅cm-2 increase). The field effect passivation properties of the SiO2/a-TiOx film stack have been modified extrinsically after the film deposition to demonstrate surface recombination velocities below 1.2 cm/s in a \text{1}\;{\rm{\Omega }} \cdot {\text{cm}} n-type silicon wafer. Finally, the TiOx films have been deposited using an inline atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (APCVD) system at temperatures below 350 °C, thus demonstrating this film stack offers both better passivation and optical performance, as well as a potentially lower manufacturing cost compared to SiN x, due to the use of APCVD rather than plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. Simulations indicate further gains in terms of optical performance (0.3 mA⋅cm-2 increase compared to SiNx - encapsulated case) may be possible using a double-layer ARC featuring a polycrystalline TiOx film followed by an aluminum oxide (AlOx). However, potential contamination from the APCVD may pose a risk to maintaining high bulk carrier lifetimes.

Publication Date

11-1-2017

Publication Title

IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics

Volume

7

Issue

6

Number of Pages

1603-1610

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOTOV.2017.2753198

Socpus ID

85022007102 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/85022007102

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