Gettering in PolySi/SiOx Passivating Contacts Enables Si-Based Tandem Solar Cells with High Thermal and Contamination ResilienceShow others and affiliations
2022 (English)In: ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, ISSN 1944-8244, E-ISSN 1944-8252, Vol. 14, no 12, p. 14342-14358Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Multijunction solar cells in a tandem configuration could further lower the costs of electricity if crystalline Si (c-Si) is used as the bottom cell. However, for direct monolithic integration on c-Si, only a restricted number of top and bottom cell architectures are compatible, due to either epitaxy or high-temperature constraints, where the interface between subcells is subject to a trade-off between transmittance, electrical interconnection, and bottom cell degradation. Using polySi/SiOx passivating contacts for Si, this degradation can be largely circumvented by tuning the polySi/SiOx stacks to promote gettering of contaminants admitted into the Si bottom cell during the top cell synthesis. Applying this concept to the low-cost top cell chalcogenides Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS), CuGaSe2 (CGSe), and AgInGaSe2 (AIGSe), fabricated under harsh S or Se atmospheres above 550 degrees C, we show that increasing the heavily doped polySi layer thickness from 40 to up to 400 nm prevents a reduction in Si carrier lifetime by 1 order of magnitude, with final lifetimes above 500 mu s uniformly across areas up to 20 cm(2). In all cases, the increased resilience was correlated with a 99.9% reduction in contaminant concentration in the c-Si bulk, provided by the thick polySi layer, which acts as a buried gettering layer in the tandem structure without compromising the Si passivation quality. The Si resilience decreased as AIGSe > CGSe > CZTS, in accordance with the measured Cu contamination profiles and higher annealing temperatures. An efficiency of up to 7% was achieved for a CZTS/Si tandem, where the Si bottom cell is no longer the limiting factor.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
American Chemical Society (ACS) American Chemical Society (ACS), 2022. Vol. 14, no 12, p. 14342-14358
Keywords [en]
tandem, gettering, chalcogenides, Si, TOPCon
National Category
Materials Chemistry Condensed Matter Physics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-474353DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c00319ISI: 000787374700036PubMedID: 35297597OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-474353DiVA, id: diva2:1658123
Funder
Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research , RMA150030Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research , SSF-RIF14-0053Swedish Research Council, 2019-04793Swedish Research Council, 821-2012-5144Swedish Research Council, 2017-00646-92022-05-132022-05-132024-01-15Bibliographically approved