Surface passivation for heterojunction silicon wafer solar cells

SURFACE PASSIVATION FOR HETEROJUNCTION SILICON WAFER SOLAR CELLS GE JIA B. Eng. (Hons.), NUS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY NUS GRADUATE SCHOOL FOR INTEGRATIVE SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2014 To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. Adapted from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake Declaration I hereby declare that the thesis is my original work and it has been written by me in its entirety. I have duly acknowledged all the sources of information which have been used in the thesis. This thesis has also not been submitted for any degree in any university previously. __________________________________________ GE JIA November 2014 i ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to my main supervisor, Prof Armin G. Aberle, for his kind and patient guidance through the past four years. As a famous scientist in this field, his comments and advices in each discussion proved to be insightful and critical, and greatly helped me plan experimental work and figure out the research direction. It was also my greatest honour working with, and being motivated by, such an established scientist. I would also like to give heartfelt thanks to Dr Thomas Mueller, who is my co-supervisor and scientific advisor. Being a Junior Einstein Award winner for developing novel passivation materials, his unparalleled knowledge in heterojunction silicon solar cells was an invaluable asset. He was always generous in sharing his knowledge and thoughts, giving scientific advice and providing experimental opportunities with external partner at the most difficult time in my PhD studies. As a friend, he was easily approachable and kind. I highly appreciate his effort and guidance through my PhD course. It was really a pleasure working with him in the last few years, and I am looking forward to such opportunity again in the future. I have to acknowledge Prof Andrew Tay for being the Chairman of my Thesis Advisory Committee and providing insightful comments during each meeting and discussion. I am deeply appreciative to all members of the silicon wafer solar cell groups in the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) at the National iii Acknowledgements University of Singapore (NUS) for their valuable suggestions and kind support. I would like to thank Dr Rolf Stangl for his expertise in simulation and contactless C-V measurements. His strong background in passivation mechanisms greatly enhanced my understanding in this topic. I must also thank Dr Johnson Wong for his support in analysing plasma processes and his acceptance to be a member of my Thesis Advisory Committee. I want to thank my fellow PhD students Zhi Peng Ling, Muzhi Tang and Ankit Khanna for their help in experiments and scientific discussions. My acknowledgement extends to our project partners in Singulus Technologies, Germany. I highly appreciate their efforts in assisting the R&D process with SINGULAR-HET. The on-site consultation with Mr Manfred Doerr made the understanding of the machine much easier. The scientific discussions with Dr Peter Wohlfart, Dr Torsten Dippell, Dr Oliver Hohn and Dr Zhenhao Zhang were always interesting and fruitful. The project and my PhD study would not have been successful without their support. I owe them a lot as my kind and caring German hosts. Last but not least, I will never forget the encouragement and understanding from my wife, Wang Peng, who is currently a PhD candidate in economics at NUS. She was always supportive towards my research and caring when I faced difficulties in experiments. She never complained when I worked overtime in the laboratory or travelled frequently overseas. My PhD would not have been smooth and successful without her. I am really grateful to my angel, Wang Peng. This research was undertaken with the support from SERIS. SERIS is sponsored by NUS and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF) through iv Acknowledgements the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB). This research was also supported by NRF, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore under its Clean Energy Research Programme (CERP Award No. NRF2010EWT-CERP001-022). v Acknowledgements vi Bibliography [1] S. Hegedus and A. Luque, "Achievements and Challenges of Solar Electricity from Photovoltaics", in Handbook of Photovoltaic Science and Engineering: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 1-38 (2011). [2] Q. Schiermeier, J. Tollefson, T. Scully, A. Witze and O. Morton, Nature, vol. 454, p. 821 (2008). [3] C. Honsberg and S. Bowden. 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[6] Z.P. Ling, J. Ge, R. Stangl, A.G. Aberle and T. Mueller, Journal of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, vol. 1, pp. 1-14 (2013). Conference papers: [1] J. Ge, M. Tang, J. Wong, Z. Zhang, T. Dippell, M. Dörr, O. Hohn, M.R. Huber, P. Wohlfart, A.G. Aberle and T. Mueller, Proc. 29th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, pp. 1032-1035 (2014). [2] J. Ge, Z.P. Ling, M. Tang, J. Wong, M. Huber, T. Dippell, P. Wohlfart, A.G. Aberle and T. Mueller, Proc. 23rd International Photovoltaic Science and Engineering Conference, pp. 79 (1-P-60) (2013). [3] J. Ge, M. Tang, J. Wong, Z. Zhang, M. Doerr, T. Dippell, O. Hohn, M. Huber, P. Wohlfart, A.G. Aberle and T. Mueller, Proc. 4th Trilateral Conference on "Nanoscience: energy, water and healthcare" (2013). [4] Z.P. Ling, F. Ma, S. Duttagupta, M. Tang, J. Ge, A. Khanna, T. Mueller, A.G. Aberle and R. Stangl, Proc. 28th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, pp. 800-805 (2013). [5] J. Ge, Z.P. Ling, J. Wong, T. Mueller and A.G. Aberle, Energy Procedia, vol. 15, pp. 107-117 (2012). 177 List of Publications [6] J. Ge, Z.P. Ling, R. Stangl, A.G. Aberle and T. Mueller, Proc. 22nd International Photovoltaic Science and Engineering Conference, pp. 85 (1-P-13) (2012). [7] Z.P. Ling, J. Ge, J. Wong, T. Mueller and A. G. Aberle, Energy Procedia, vol. 15, pp. 118-128 (2012). 178 [...]... improved surface passivation scheme using inductively coupled plasma deposited amorphous silicon suboxide thin films for heterojunction silicon wafer solar cells is successfully developed in this work Comparing with standard capacitively coupled plasma deposited amorphous silicon, this new process demonstrates a suppressed epitaxial growth that improves the robustness of production, and a superior passivation. .. defects 27 2.1.3.4 Surface recombination 30 2.1.3.5 Reduction of recombination 32 2.2 Heterojunction Si wafer solar cells 35 2.2.1 Hydrogenated amorphous Si alloys 36 2.2.1.1 Structure and defect states 36 2.2.1.2 Characteristics of amphoteric dangling bonds 38 vii 2.2.1.3 Surface passivation 42 2.2.1.4 Conditions for good surface passivation material ... .xvii List of Symbols and Abbreviations xxv Chapter 1 1.1 Introduction 1 Heterojunction silicon wafer solar cells: a promising candidate for high-efficiency PV 4 1.2 Thesis motivation 6 1.3 Thesis structure 11 Chapter 2 2.1 Basic Physics of Heterojunction Solar Cells 15 Charge generation, transport and recombination 15 2.1.1 Generation ... alternative surface passivation scheme to replace amorphous silicon using an industrial plasma reactor with reduced ion bombardment By applying the new process - which xiii Summary consists of remote inductively coupled plasma deposited amorphous silicon suboxide thin films from a high-throughput pilot line tool - to solar- grade n-type Czochralski-grown silicon wafers, a state-of-the-art passivation. .. platform SINGULAR-HET 158 x 8.2 Future research work 159 8.2.1 General proposal 159 8.2.2 Proposal for ICP-deposited a-SiOx:H(i) 159 8.2.3 Proposal for HET solar cell fabrication 160 Bibliography 163 List of Publications 177 xi xii Summary This thesis focuses on the development and analysis of surface passivating amorphous silicon alloys for heterojunction. .. and the electron orbits formed the basic physics of solar cells [4] The first modern solar cell concept was born in the Bell laboratories in 1941, which was based on crystalline silicon (c-Si) [5, 6] By 1954, these solar cells had reached energy conversion efficiencies (η) of 6% based on a diffused p-n junction structure [7] The first major boost of research and development in solar cell devices was... not included in this table will be discussed in relevant chapters 12 Table 2.1: Highest efficiency HET solar cells reported in the literature All these cells used n-type c-Si wafers 53 Table 3.1: Recipes for solutions used in the wafer cleaning process The quantities for chemicals and water are shown in ratios instead of absolute amount 57 Table 3.2: Bonding types/modes... diagram 46 2.2.3 Current research status on HET solar cells 52 Chapter 3 Equipment, Sample Preparation and Characterisation Methods 55 3.1 Flow chart for sample fabrication 55 3.2 Wafer cleaning 57 3.3 Passivation film deposition 57 3.3.1 Sample structure 58 3.3.2 Notes on the choice of silicon wafer substrates 58 3.3.3 Plasma reactors ... research and development in solar cell devices was seen in the 1960s when they were mainly intended for space applications The development of solar cells for terrestrial use started in the 1970s due to increasing oil prices and oil embargos, revealing the need for alternative fuel sources Since then, solar cells are recognised as a new generation of power generating technology that has the advantages of... of production, and a superior passivation quality which benefits from the low-damage deposition method Therefore, the high-throughput industrial inductively coupled plasma deposition approach is very promising as a robust, high-quality and productive process for heterojunction silicon wafer solar cell manufacturing xiv List of Tables Table 1.1: Summary of standard characterisation techniques used in . SURFACE PASSIVATION FOR HETEROJUNCTION SILICON WAFER SOLAR CELLS GE JIA B. Eng. (Hons.), NUS A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY. summary, an improved surface passivation scheme using inductively cou- pled plasma deposited amorphous silicon suboxide thin films for heterojunction silicon wafer solar cells is successfully. analysis of surface passivating amorphous silicon alloys for heterojunction silicon wafer solar cell applications. As the narrow process window of conventional intrinsic amorphous silicon, as