Dry Passivation Process for Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells Using Hydrogen Plasma Treatment Followed by &lt;italic&gt;In Situ&lt;/italic&gt; a-Si:H Deposition

Xu, Menglei; Wang, Chong; Bearda, Twan; Simoen, Eddy; Radhakrishnan, Hariharsudan Sivaramakrishnan; Gordon, Ivan; Li, Wei; Szlufcik, Jozef; Poortmans, Jef

doi:10.1109/jphotov.2018.2871329

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Besides, Liu et al [135] found that the post H 2 plasma treatment with residual SiH 4 molecules contributes to the formation of a dense silicon layer which can inhibit the out diffusion of hydrogen from bulk, thus, causing evident enhancement in the J sc , V oc and E ff of SHJ solar cells. Xu et al [136] also demonstrated that microwave H 2 plasma treatment before a-Si:H deposition can effectively reduce surface recombination velocity as low as 4 cm s −1 .…”

Section: Huge Benefits Of Hydrogenation On Next-generation Silicon So...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress of hydrogenation engineering in crystalline silicon solar cells: a review

Song¹,

Hu²,

Lin³

et al. 2022

J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.

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Crystalline silicon solar cells are always moving towards “high efficiency and low cost”, which requires continuously improving the quality of crystalline silicon materials. Nevertheless, crystalline silicon materials typically contain various kinds of impurities and defects, which act as carrier recombination centers. Therefore these impurities and defects must be well controlled during the solar cell fabrication processes to improve the cell efficiency. Hydrogenation of crystalline silicon is one important method to deactivate these impurities and defects, which is so-called “hydrogenation engineering” in this paper. Hydrogen is widely reported to be able to passivate diverse defects like crystallographic defects, metallic impurities, boron-oxygen related defects and etc, but the effectiveness of hydrogen passivation depends strongly on the processing conditions. Moreover, in this decade, advanced hydrogenation technique has been developed and widely applied in the photovoltaic industry to significantly improve the performance of silicon solar cells. As the research on hydrogenation study has made a significant progress, it is the right time to write a review paper on introducing the state-of-the-art hydrogenation study and its applications in photovoltaic industry. The paper first introduces the fundamental properties of hydrogen in crystalline silicon and then discusses the applications of hydrogen on deactivating/inducing typical defects (e.g. dislocations, grain boundaries, various metallic impurities, boron-oxygen related defects and LeTID) in p- and n-type crystalline silicon, respectively. At last, the benefits of hydrogenation engineering on the next-generation silicon solar cells (e.g. TOPCon and HJT solar cells) are discussed. Overall, it was found that hydrogen can deactivate most of typical defects (sometimes induce defect) in n- and p-type crystalline silicon, leading to a significant efficiency enhancement in PERC, TOPCon and HJT solar cells. In conclusion, the paper aims to assist young researchers to better understand hydrogenation research and shed light on the future development of hydrogenation study.

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Section: Huge Benefits Of Hydrogenation On Next-generation Silicon So...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress of hydrogenation engineering in crystalline silicon solar cells: a review

Song¹,

Hu²,

Lin³

et al. 2022

J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.

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“…13,14 Extrinsic hydrogenation method like hydrogen plasma treatment (HPT) for Si HJ has been considered one of the industrially viable schemes to reduce deep and shallow defect states in the a-Si:H/c-Si hetero-interface. 15 Different groups have studied the introduction of HPT at various stages of amorphous silicon deposition, namely, Pre 16 (before i-layer), Post 17 (after i-layer), and Intermediate (during i-layer) HPT 15 using either R.F. (radio-frequency) or very-high frequency (V.H.F) PECVD methods.…”

Section: ■ Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Different groups have studied the introduction of HPT at various stages of amorphous silicon deposition, namely, Pre (before i-layer), Post (after i-layer), and Intermediate (during i-layer) HPT using either R.F. (radio-frequency) or very-high frequency (V.H.F) PECVD methods. , Comparative studies of different HPT methods , have shown that I-HPT and Post-HPT show better performance because they prevent defect generation due to ion-bombardment on free Si surface during Pre-treatment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interface Engineering by Intermediate Hydrogen Plasma Treatment Using Dc-PECVD for Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Soman

Das

Hegedus

2023

ACS Appl. Electron. Mater.

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The high open-circuit voltage (V OC) in silicon heterojunction solar cells is attributed to the superior amorphous–crystalline silicon interface passivation. In this work, we investigated a method called intermediate hydrogen plasma treatment (I-HPT) in which the intrinsic amorphous silicon is exposed to hydrogen plasma in between the deposition using direct current (d.c.) plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. This method can not only enhance the surface passivation but also find industrial application due to its ease of integration in the production line. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy reveals that I-HPT makes the bulk of the amorphous matrix more disordered. We anticipate that the improvement in passivation comes from the diffusion of hydrogen from the bulk to the interface and shifting of the film closer to the “amorphous-to-microcrystalline” transition regime. Our optimized I-HPT method can obtain an implied V OC of 746 mV without annealing, which corresponds to a low surface recombination velocity of 3.2 cm/s. Therefore, we propose the I-HPT method as an alternative to high-temperature annealing which can reduce a fabrication step and processing time. The I-HPT films characterized by Raman spectroscopy do not show any hydrogen-induced crystallization. We have also demonstrated the proof of concept by applying I-HPT to a silicon heterojunction solar cell which shows ∼15 mV increase in V OC in the device and an absolute increase in efficiency by 0.3% as compared to a cell with no HPT.

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“…In general, optimized (i)a-Si:H should be deposited with dense bulk quality while suppressing the detrimental epitaxial growth at the c-Si/(i)a-Si:H interface. 3 Approaches have been proposed to enhance the surface passivation qualities of (i)a-Si:H layer, such as using hydrogendiluted SiH 4 , [4][5][6][7] pre-or post-hydrogen plasma treatment (HPT), [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] (i) a-Si:H bilayer stacks 5,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] and post-annealing. 3,23,24 Subsequent overlaying of doped layers and transparent conductive oxide (TCO) on the (i)a-Si:H layers also impose challenges on preserving their passivation qualities of the c-Si surface.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of (i)a‐Si:H deposition temperature on high‐efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells

Zhao

Procel

Smets

et al. 2022

Progress in Photovoltaics

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Dry Passivation Process for Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells Using Hydrogen Plasma Treatment Followed by <italic>In Situ</italic> a-Si:H Deposition

Cited by 16 publications

References 60 publications

Progress of hydrogenation engineering in crystalline silicon solar cells: a review

Progress of hydrogenation engineering in crystalline silicon solar cells: a review

Interface Engineering by Intermediate Hydrogen Plasma Treatment Using Dc-PECVD for Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Effects of (i)a‐Si:H deposition temperature on high‐efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells

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