Grain boundary effects and passivation studies in polycrystalline MIS solar cells

Thesis/Dissertation · Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1983

OSTI ID:6319117

Kai, F Y.T.

The Cr-MIS polycrystalline solar cell can be fabricated to produce >10% efficient devices, after passivation, which will meet the goal of high efficiency and low cost. The structure of the solar cell from top layer to bottom is SiO - Cu - Cr - SiO/sub x/ - (p) poly - Si - Al. Polycrystallinity raises questions of grain structure, grain boundaries, grain size, and the quality of thin films. Wacker poly-Si has a columnar structure which is desirable for solar cell applications. Grain boundaries (GB) can be expected to provide internal surfaces with high surface recombination velocity. The active GB trap photogenerated carriers. The effects of monatomic hydrogen plasma, lithium, and boron minority-carrier mirror (MCM) passivation to reduce GB activity were studied. An equivalent model has been developed to analyze the conductance-voltage-frequency data to obtain interface state distribution for a thin-oxide tunneling MIS diode. The photovoltaic data, four-point probe data, spectral response, dark I-V, diffusion length, G-V-f, interface state data, and LBIC response are compared for several cases to show that passivation improves the photovoltaic performance of the poly-Si MIS solar cells. The boron MCM is a high temperature, short diffusion time process for which the cells are more stable than in hydrogen and lithium passivation. The MCM structure can be generated to fabricate MINP-MCM cells.

• OSTI ID: 6319117
• Resource Relation: Other Information: Thesis (Ph. D.)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
SILICON SOLAR CELLS
FABRICATION
PASSIVATION
GRAIN BOUNDARIES
PERFORMANCE
POLYCRYSTALS
CRYSTAL STRUCTURE
CRYSTALS
DIRECT ENERGY CONVERTERS
EQUIPMENT
MICROSTRUCTURE
PHOTOELECTRIC CELLS
PHOTOVOLTAIC CELLS
SOLAR CELLS
SOLAR EQUIPMENT
140501* - Solar Energy Conversion- Photovoltaic Conversion