Heavy Boron-Doped Silicon Tunneling Inter-layer Enables Efficient Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells
P-type hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) has been used as a hole-selective layer for efficient n-type crystalline silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells. However, the presence of an additional valence band offset at the interface between intrinsic amorphous hydrogenated silicon and p-type nc-Si:H films will limit the hole carrier transportation. In this work, it has been found that when a heavily boron-doped silicon oxide layer deposited with high hydrogen dilution to silane (p<sub>B</sub>) was inserted into their interface, the fill factor of SHJ solar cells increases 3% absolutely because of the reduced valence band offset and the increased opportunity to provide a hopping tunnel assisted by the doping energy level and valence band tail states. Furthermore, the additional boron incorporation in intrinsic amorphous silicon adjacent to p<sub>B</sub> helps to enhance the built-in electric field, thus increasing the hole selectivity. By these means, the power conversion efficiency was improved from 23.9% to approximately 25%.
Authors
- Yinuo Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1607-3226)
- Guangyuan Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2595-361X)
- Shenglei Huang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2345-5668)
- Haoxin Fu
- Wenjie Zhao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4690-5609)
- Anjun Han (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1216-5577)
- Zhengxin Liu
- Zhenfei Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7914-997X)
- Wenzhu Liu
- Liping Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6508-3757)
- Qiang Shi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9046-2924)
- Bin Fan
- Honghua Zhang
- Junlin Du (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7838-0045)
- Fanying Meng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6504-4499)
- Jianhua Shi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-3523-0831)
Institutions
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- ShanghaiTech University (CN)
- Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
- Published
- 2024-08-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.4c07897
- Citations
- 5
- Primary Topic
- Silicon and Solar Cell Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.04
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality
- Shanghai Rising-Star Program
- Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Branch
- National Key Research and Development Program of China