Record low surface recombination velocities on low-resistivity silicon solar cell substrates
- 1 January 1996
- conference paper
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
- No. 01608371,p. 413-416
- https://doi.org/10.1109/pvsc.1996.564031
Abstract
In this paper, the lowest ever reported effective surface recombination velocities S/sub eff/ on typical p-type low-resistivity silicon solar cell substrates are presented. We obtain this surface passivation by means of remote plasma silicon nitride films fabricated at 375/spl deg/C. On polished as well as on chemically textured silicon surfaces, the applied low-temperature passivation scheme is significantly superior to high-temperature passivation by state-of-the-art thermal oxides. On polished 1.5-/spl Omega/cm p-Si wafers, an extremely low S/sub eff/ value of 4 cm/s is obtained. Because of the enormous potential of these plasma silicon nitride films as passivation medium for the rear surface of silicon solar cells, we also investigate silicon nitride-passivated, Al grid-covered p-Si surfaces as used by us in bifacial solar cells. On such samples we measure spatially averaged S/sub eff/ values as low as 135 cm/s.Keywords
This publication has 13 references indexed in Scilit:
- Record low surface recombination velocities on 1 Ω cm p-silicon using remote plasma silicon nitride passivationApplied Physics Letters, 1996
- On the data analysis of light-biased photoconductance decay measurementsJournal of Applied Physics, 1996
- Injection-level dependent surface recombination velocities at the silicon-plasma silicon nitride interfaceApplied Physics Letters, 1995
- Note on the interpretation of injection-level-dependent surface recombination velocitiesApplied Physics A, 1995
- Direct observation of a scaling effect on effective minority carrier lifetimesJournal of Applied Physics, 1994
- Surface recombination velocity measurements at the silicon–silicon dioxide interface by microwave-detected photoconductance decayJournal of Applied Physics, 1994
- Intrinsic upper limits of the carrier lifetime in siliconJournal of Applied Physics, 1994
- Impact of illumination level and oxide parameters on Shockley–Read–Hall recombination at the Si-SiO2 interfaceJournal of Applied Physics, 1992
- Numerical modeling of textured silicon solar cells using PC-1DIEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, 1990
- Plasma Si nitride—A promising dielectric to achieve high-quality silicon MIS/IL solar cellsJournal of Applied Physics, 1981