Research progress of crystalline silicon solar cells

In this article, we mainly introduce basic working principle of solar cells and properties of c-Si, as well as discuss the effects of oxide passivation layer on c-Si solar cells from the perspective of the minority carrier recombination. Research status and perspective of four typical c-Si solar cells are reviewed and the corresponding physical mechanisms for achieving high efficiency are discussed: 1)The passivated emitter solar cells adopt a heavily doped point contact structure on the back to reduce the contact area between the c-Si and metal to reduce recombination loss; 2)Intrinsic amorphous silicon thin layers of the silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells provide high quality interface passivation and the heterogeneous contact between the c-Si and the amorphous silicon enhances the open circuit voltage (Voc) of the devices; 3) Tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cells are based on an ultra-thin tunnel oxide (SiOx) and a phosphorus-doped silicon layer, which significantly lowers the surface recombination at the metal-semiconductor interface; and 4) Novel selective contact solar cells (like DASH device) uses low temperature dopant-free metal oxide as an electron/hole selective layer to achieve efficient collection for photogenerated carriers. © 2021, Solar Energy Periodical Office Co., Ltd. All right reserved.