Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Vapour Deposition for High-efficiency c-Si Solar Cells
V.V. Kuruganti (TU Delft - Photovoltaic Materials and Devices)
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Abstract
The doctoral dissertation focuses on developing cost-effective, yet industrially viable, high-efficiency solar cells using APCVD technology. The following are some of the key highlights of the work: 1) A novel patterning and masking technique for fabricating IBC solar cells. The patterning technique capitalizes on the enhanced oxidation properties present under the laser-doped phosphorous BSF regions. 2) We fabricated diffused junction IBC solar cells with conversion efficiencies comparable to the commercially available full-tube diffused ZEBRA IBC solar cells, using the APCVD layer to form the doped regions. We use the high-temperature co-annealing step to prevent BRL formation, drive-in dopants of both polarities, and grow in-situ SiO2 at the Si/dopant glass interface, which later serves as a universal passivation stack. 3) This work demonstrates the concept of in-situ annealing used to crystallize boron-doped amorphous silicon layers deposited by APCVD to form boron-doped polysilicon layers for the fabrication of cost-effective solar cell concepts based on passivating contacts. 4) This work also delves into understanding the origins and mitigation strategies for the blistering of polysilicon layers upon fast-firing. We demonstrate that the use of a bi-layer stack with a low hydrogen content, such as PECVD silicon oxide or phosphosilicate glass, between the poly-Si and PECVD silicon nitride layers significantly improves the firing stability of the phosphorous-doped poly-Si layers.