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Minority carrier lifetime and efficiency improvement of multicrystalline silicon solar cells by two-step process
Impurities and defects are of significant interest in multicrystalline silicon, due to the detrimental effect they can have on carrier lifetimes and electrical properties. In view of that, it is important to incorporate certain processing steps to decrease the recombination activities. In this study...
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Published in: | Renewable energy 2015-05, Vol.77, p.331-337 |
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Main Authors: | , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | Impurities and defects are of significant interest in multicrystalline silicon, due to the detrimental effect they can have on carrier lifetimes and electrical properties. In view of that, it is important to incorporate certain processing steps to decrease the recombination activities. In this study, a novel experiment was applied as a beneficial approach to improve the electronic quality of low-resistivity mc-Si substrates via a two-step process. Initially, the first step involves gettering multicrystalline substrates using sacrificial porous silicon layer on both sides, which was introduced as a simple sequence for efficient extrinsic gettering schemes. The gettering experiment was performed at 600–900 °C, and optimum results were obtained at 900 °C. Then, the second step involves coating the front surface of gettered mc-Si at 900 °C with vanadium oxide that serves as an excellent antireflection layer and leads to improve furthermore the electrical properties. Significant improvements were obtained after the deposition of vanadium oxide antireflection coating, in view of the fact that gettered mc-Si substrate at 900 °C provides the highest minority carrier lifetime and the lowest effective surface recombination velocity. An overall increase of the electrical properties was obtained after the described two-step process. The conversion efficiency increases from 6% (reference) and reached 13.7%.
•An important decrease of the recombination activities was reached after two-step process.•The effective minority carrier lifetime has been improved noticeable.•Significant enhancement of the IQE after two-step process experiment.•Improvement of the conversion efficiency of low cost mc-Si based solar cells. |
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ISSN: | 0960-1481 1879-0682 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.renene.2014.12.014 |