Gettering and passivation of high efficiency multicrystalline silicon solar cells

A detailed study was conducted on aluminum and phosphorus gettering in HEM mc-Si and defect passivation by PECVD SiN in EFG mc-Si to achieve high efficiency solar cells on these promising photovoltaic materials. Solar cells with efficiencies as high as 18.6% (1 cm2 area) were achieved on multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) grown by the heat exchanger method (HEM) by a process which implements impurity gettering, an effective back surface field, front surface passivation, and forming gas annealing. This represents the highest reported solar cell efficiency on mc-Si to date. PCD analysis revealed that the bulk lifetime in certain HEM samples after phosphorus gettering can be as high as 135 μs. By incorporating a deeper aluminum back surface field (Al-BSF), the back surface recombination velocity (Sb) for 0.65 Ω-cm HEM mc-Si solar cells was lowered from 10,000 cm/s to 2,000 cm/s resulting in the 18.6% efficient device. It was also observed that a screen-printed/RTP alloyed Al-BSF process could raise the efficie...