Understanding and Mitigating the Contamination of Intrinsic poly-Si Gaps in Passivated IBC Solar Cells

Conference · Wed Feb 05 23:00:00 EST 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/PVSC40753.2019.8980607· OSTI ID:1603884

Hartenstein, Matthew ^[1]; Nemeth, William M ^[1]; LaSalvia, Vincenzo A ^[1]; Harvey, Steven P ^[1]; Page, Matthew ^[1]; Young, David L ^[1]; Stradins, Pauls ^[1]; Agarwal, Sumit ^[2]

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1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
2. Colorado School of Mines

We investigate factors that are critical for the performance of interdigitated back contact (IBC) solar cells based on polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) passivated contacts. During patterning of doped lines using direct plasma deposition through a shadow mask, we show that the intrinsic poly-Si gap becomes contaminated with dopants, leading to shunting. Possible contamination mechanisms during masked deposition and high- temperature annealing are tested. Strategies developed to mitigate the contamination, such as reactive ion etching after deposition and amorphous to poly-Si crystallization in oxygen, will lead to improved IBC fabrication methods.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1603884
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-5900-74028
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
amorphous materials
pattern formation
photovoltaic cells
plasma materials processing
silicon
surface contamination