Excellent crystalline silicon surface passivation by transparent conductive Al-doped ZnO/ITO stack

The surface passivation materials commonly used in crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells are either electrically insulating or opaque to the solar spectrum, which poses the electrical loss or optical loss. Hence it is of great significance to explore functional films that are simultaneously transparent, conductive and passivating for c-Si. In this study, we successfully tune two most well-known transparent conductive oxides, i.e. Al-doped ZnO (AZO) and indium tin oxide (ITO), as excellent passivation layers for c-Si surface. The AZO film is grown by atomic layer deposition and is capped with a magnetron-sputtered ITO film. Dynamic secondary ion mass spectrometry reveals that such stack design can retain higher hydrogen concentration on c-Si surface than a single AZO film during annealing. In addition, the AZO should be highly doped to reduce the energy barrier height around c-Si surface, thereby increasing the charge carrier asymmetry and thus reducing surface recombination. It is also highly crucial to optimize the annealing temperature and interfacial silicon oxide. As such, the effective minority carrier lifetime reaches 2.0 ms and the implied open-circuit voltage approaches 700 mV. Besides, the AZO/ITO stacked films possess negligible optical absorption, low sheet resistance (similar to 90 Omega/sq), and outstanding antireflection effect on c-Si surface.

Automated summary

In this study, AZO and ITO films were successfully tuned as excellent passivation layers for c-Si surfaces, achieving effective minority carrier lifetime and outstanding optical properties through the optimization of annealing temperature and interfacial silicon oxide.