TY - JOUR

T1 - Optical Optimization Potential of Transparent-Passivated Contacts in Silicon Solar Cells

AU - Eberst, Alexander

AU - Zamchiy, Alexandr

AU - Qiu, Kaifu

AU - Winkel, Peter

AU - Gebrewold, Habtamu T.

AU - Lambertz, Andreas

AU - Duan, Weiyuan

AU - Li, Shenghao

AU - Bittkau, Karsten

AU - Kirchartz, Thomas

AU - Rau, Uwe

AU - Ding, Kaining

N1 - Funding Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding of the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy in the framework of the TUKAN project (grant: 0324198D). The work of A.Z. was supported in part by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and in part by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, under Project 3.13378.2019/13.2. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Solar RRL published by Wiley-VCH GmbH

PY - 2022/6

Y1 - 2022/6

N2 - Herein, an optical loss analysis of the recently introduced silicon carbide–based transparent passivating contact (TPC) for silicon heterojunction solar cells is presented, the most dominant losses are identified, and the potential for reducing these losses is discussed. Magnesium fluoride is applied as an antireflective coating to reduce the reflective losses by up to 0.8 mA cm−2. When applying the magnesium fluoride, the passivation quality of the layer stack degrades, but is restored after annealing on a hot plate in ambient air. Afterwards, a road map for TPC solar cells toward an efficiency of 25% is presented and discussed. The largest part in efficiency gain is achieved by reducing the finger width and by increasing the passivation quality. Furthermore, it is shown that TPC solar cells have the potential to achieve short-circuit current densities above 42 mA cm−2 if the finger width is reduced and the front-side indium tin oxide (ITO) layer can be replaced by an ITO silicon nitride double layer.

AB - Herein, an optical loss analysis of the recently introduced silicon carbide–based transparent passivating contact (TPC) for silicon heterojunction solar cells is presented, the most dominant losses are identified, and the potential for reducing these losses is discussed. Magnesium fluoride is applied as an antireflective coating to reduce the reflective losses by up to 0.8 mA cm−2. When applying the magnesium fluoride, the passivation quality of the layer stack degrades, but is restored after annealing on a hot plate in ambient air. Afterwards, a road map for TPC solar cells toward an efficiency of 25% is presented and discussed. The largest part in efficiency gain is achieved by reducing the finger width and by increasing the passivation quality. Furthermore, it is shown that TPC solar cells have the potential to achieve short-circuit current densities above 42 mA cm−2 if the finger width is reduced and the front-side indium tin oxide (ITO) layer can be replaced by an ITO silicon nitride double layer.

KW - antireflective coatings

KW - magnesium fluoride

KW - passivating contacts

KW - silicon carbides

KW - silicon solar cells

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124552915&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/e1f6d8f3-afad-3df7-9071-80dbdcf54c24/

U2 - 10.1002/solr.202101050

DO - 10.1002/solr.202101050

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85124552915

VL - 6

JO - Solar RRL

JF - Solar RRL

SN - 2367-198X

IS - 6

M1 - 2101050

ER -