Analysis of the Silicon Dioxide Passivation and Forming Gas Annealing in Silicon Solar Cells
Abstract
The passivation of silicon solar cells by the deposition of SiNx anti-reflection coating is usual in the industry. However, materials such as SiO2, TiO2 and Al2O3 may be a cost-effective alternative and its analysis is mainly reported in silicon wafers. The goal of this paper is to present the development and analysis of silicon solar cells passivated with a thin layer of SiO2 as well as the evaluation of the effectiveness of the annealing step in forming gas. The dry oxidation was performed before the TiO2 anti-reflection coating deposition and the annealing in forming gas was performed in the same furnace. The temperature and time of the oxidation and the annealing step were experimentally optimized. The efficiency of 15.9 %was achieved. The highest average efficiency was found in the oxidation temperature range from 750 oC to 800 oC, during 7 minutes, caused by the increasing of open circuit voltage and fill factor. At short wavelengths, the internal quantum efficiency decreases slightly with the increasing of the oxidation temperature. The minority carrier diffusion length (LD) of the solar cells processed with the oxidation temperature of 800 °C was around 1890 m. The open circuit voltage shows a slight trend of increasing with the oxidation time. The annealing step in forming gas did not improve the average efficiency of the solar cells. Solar cells processed with oxidation and annealing presented higher internal quantum efficiency at short wavelengths than cells with only annealing.
Keywords
Silicon solar cells, Passivation, Silicon oxide