Potential improvement of polysilicon solar cells by grain boundary and intragrain diffusion of aluminum
- 15 February 1984
- journal article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Journal of Applied Physics
- Vol. 55 (4) , 1162-1167
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.333210
Abstract
Experimental results are presented that imply potential improvements afforded by aluminum diffusion in both bulk and thin-film polysilicon solar cells. For bulk cells, a high-temperature aluminum diffusion (alloying) is shown to increase the minority-carrier diffusion length by gettering intragrain impurities. The role of the grain boundaries in this process and the influence of a light bias on the carrier lifetime are discussed. For thin-film cells, a low-temperature aluminum diffusion is shown to substantially passivate grain boundaries and hence decrease the recombination velocity. The decrease is evaluated using electron-beam-induced-current (EBIC) measurements interpreted via numerical analysis of the underlying carrier-transport problem. The actual benefit of the grain-boundary passivation to the open-circuit voltage of a thin-film cell is discussed.This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
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