Hydrogenated amorphous silicon oxide (a-SiOx:H) solar cells have been successfully implemented to multi-junction thin film silicon solar cells. The efficiency of these solar cells, however, has still been below that of state-of-the-art solar cells mainly due to the low Jsc of the a-SiOx:H solar cells and the unbalanced current matching between sub-cells. In this study, we carry out optical simulations to find the main optical losses for the a-SiOx:H solar cell, which so far was mainly optimized for Voc and fill-factor (FF). It is observed that a large portion of the incident light is absorbed parasitically by the p-a-SiOx:H and n-a-SiOx:H layers, although the use of these layers leads to the highest Voc × FF product. When a more transparent and conductive p-nc-SiOx:H layer is substituted for the p-a-SiOx:H layer, the parasitic absorption loss at short wavelengths is notably reduced, leading to higher Jsc. However, this gain in Jsc by the use of the p-nc-SiOx:H compromises the Voc. When replacing the n-a-SiOx:H layer for an n-nc-SiOx:H layer that has low n and k values, the plasmonic absorption loss at the n-nc-SiOx:H/Ag interfaces and the parasitic absorption in the n-nc-SiOx:H are substantially reduced. Implementation of this n-nc-SiOx:H leads to an increase of the Jsc without a drop of the Voc and FF. When implementing a thinner p-a-SiOx:H layer, a thicker i-a-SiOx:H layer, and an n-nc-SiOx:H layer, a-SiOx:H solar cells with not only high Jsc but also high Voc and FF can be fabricated. As a result, an 8.8% a-SiOx:H single junction solar cell is successfully fabricated with a Voc of 1.02 V, a FF of 0.70, and a Jsc of 12.3 mA/cm2, which is the highest efficiency ever reported for this type of solar cell.I. INTRODUCTION

Optical and electrical properties of hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) solar cells are strongly influenced by the morphology of underlying substrates. By texturing the substrates, the photogenerated current of nc-Si:H solar cells can increase due to enhanced light scattering. These textured substrates are, however, often incompatible with defect-less nc-Si:H growth resulting in lower Voc and FF. In this study we investigate the correlation between the substrate morphology, the nc-Si:H solar-cell performance, and the defect density in the intrinsic layer of the solar cells (i-nc-Si:H). Statistical surface parameters representing the substrate morphology do not show a strong correlation with the solar-cell parameters. Thus, we first quantify the line density of potentially defective valleys of randomly textured ZnO substrates where the opening angle is smaller than 130° (ρ<130). This ρ<130 is subsequently compared with the solar-cell performance and the defect density of i-nc-Si:H (ρdefect), which is obtained by fitting external photovoltaic parameters from experimental results and simulations. We confirm that when ρ<130 increases the Voc and FF significantly drops. It is also observed that ρdefect increases following a power law dependence of ρ<130. This result is attributed to more frequently formed defective regions for substrates having higher ρ<130.