The dehydrogenation of intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) at temperatures above approximately 300 °C degrades its ability to passivate silicon wafer surfaces. This limits the temperature of post-passivation processing steps during the fabrication of advanced silicon heterojunction or silicon-based tandem solar cells. We demonstrate that a hydrogen plasma can rehydrogenate intrinsic a-Si:H passivation layers that have been dehydrogenated by annealing. The hydrogen plasma treatment fully restores the effective carrier lifetime to several milliseconds in textured crystalline silicon wafers coated with 8-nm-thick intrinsic a-Si:H layers after annealing at temperatures of up to 450 °C. Plasma-initiated rehydrogenation also translates to complete solar cells: A silicon heterojunction solar cell subjected to annealing at 450 °C (following intrinsic a-Si:H deposition) had an open-circuit voltage of less than 600 mV, but an identical cell that received hydrogen plasma treatment reached a voltage of over 710 mV and an efficiency of over 19%.
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- Plasma-Initiated Rehydrogenation of Amorphous Silicon to Increase the Temperature Processing Window of Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells
- Shi, Jianwei (Author)
- Boccard, Mathieu (Author)
- Holman, Zachary (Author)
- Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering (Contributor)
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Digital object identifier: 10.1063/1.4958831
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Identifier TypeInternational standard serial numberIdentifier Value0003-6951
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Identifier TypeInternational standard serial numberIdentifier Value1077-3118
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This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters and may be found at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4958831.
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Shi, J., Boccard, M., & Holman, Z. (2016). Plasma-initiated rehydrogenation of amorphous silicon to increase the temperature processing window of silicon heterojunction solar cells. Applied Physics Letters, 109(3), 031601. doi:10.1063/1.4958831