Amorphous/crystalline silicon interface passivation: Ambient-temperature dependence and implications for solar cell performance

Journal Article · Mon Mar 02 00:00:00 EST 2015 · IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/JPHOTOV.2015.2397602· OSTI ID:1229738

Seif, Johannes P. ^[1]; Krishnamani, Gopal ^[1]; Demaurex, Benedicte ^[1]; Ballif, Christophe ^[1]; Wolf, Stefaan De ^[1]

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1. École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Neuchatel (Switzerland)

Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells feature amorphous silicon passivation films, which enable very high voltages. We report how such passivation increases with operating temperature for amorphous silicon stacks involving doped layers and decreases for intrinsic-layer-only passivation. We discuss the implications of this phenomenon on the solar cell's temperature coefficient, which represents an important figure-of-merit for the energy yield of devices deployed in the field. We show evidence that both open-circuit voltage (Voc) and fill factor (FF) are affected by these variations in passivation and quantify these temperature-mediated effects, compared with those expected from standard diode equations. We confirm that devices with high Voc values at 25°C show better high-temperature performance. Thus, we also argue that the precise device architecture, such as the presence of charge-transport barriers, may affect the temperature-dependent device performance as well.

• Research Organization: École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Neuchatel (Switzerland)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
• Grant/Contract Number: EE0006335
• OSTI ID: 1229738
• Journal Information: IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics, Vol. 5, Issue 3; ISSN 2156-3381
• Publisher: IEEE
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
temperature coefficient
passivation
silicon heterojunction
solar cells