Heterostructure Silicon Solar Cells with Enhanced Power Conversion Efficiency Based on Six/Ni3+Self-Doped NiOx Passivating Contac

Developing efficient crystalline silicon/wide-band gap metal-oxide thin-film heterostructure junction-based crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells has been anattractive alternative to the silicon thinfilm-based counterparts. Herein, nickel oxide thinfilms are introduced as the hole-selective layer forc-Si solar cells and prepared using thereactive sputtering technique with the target of metallic nickel. An optimal Ni3+self-doped NiOxfilm is obtained by tuning the reactive oxygen atmosphere to construct theoptimizedc-Si/NiOxheterostructure band alignment. A thin SiOxinterlayer was furtherintroduced to reduce the defect of thec-Si/NiOxinterface with the UV-ozone (UVO)treatment. The constructedp-typec-Si/SiOx/NiOx/Ag solar cell exhibits an increase inthe open voltage from 586 to 611 mV and achieves a 19.2% conversion efficiency.

Automated summary

The study demonstrates significant progress in improving the performance of solar cells by introducing nickel oxide thin films as a hole-selective layer, combined with optimized structural design and UV-ozone treatment.