In this study, we focus on the relationship between potential-induced degradation (PID) and characteristics of antireflection coating (ARC) on crystalline silicon solar cells. We evaluated the PID of general industrial multicrystalline p-type silicon solar cell groups with various ARCs. The module, which has an ARC deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE-CVD) using a hollow cathode, indicated high resistance to PID with maintained conventional refractive index (RI). This ARC had properties of high conductivity and low oxygen concentration. It has the potential to suppress PID on crystalline silicon solar cells with maintained conventional RI.

Using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, we investigated the band alignment of a Ag/poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT)/ZnO photovoltaic structure. At the P3HT/ZnO interface, a band bending of P3HT and a short surface depletion layer of ZnO were observed. The offset between the highest occupied molecular orbital of P3HT and the conduction band minimum of ZnO at the interface contributed to the open circuit voltage (Voc) was estimated to be approximately 1.5 ± 0.1 eV, which was bigger than that of the electrically measured effective Voc of P3HT/ZnO photovoltaic devices, meaning that the P3HT/ZnO photovoltaic structure has the potential to provide improved photovoltaic properties.

We have investigated the effects of deposition temperature and post-annealing on the passivation performance of AlOx films deposited by O3-based atomic layer deposition for crystalline Si. We found that the dramatic enhancement in the passivation performance of room-temperature deposited AlOx films by post-annealing is due to the phase transformation of aluminum silicate to mullite in an AlOx interlayer and the resulting self-aligned AlOx/SiOx interface. This result is interesting for the fabrication of high-performance silicon solar cells with AlOx passivation layers.