Interdigitated back contact silicon heterojunction (IBC-SHJ) solar cell

Interdigitated back contact silicon heterojunction (IBC-SHJ) solar cells have been developed. This structure has interdigitated p/n amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) films deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) on the backside of crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers, with light irradiating the front surface. IBC-SHJ cells possess advantages over front junction a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction cells due to minimized current losses in the illuminating side, and over traditional diffused back-junction cells due to low temperature processing combined with the potential of high voltages for the heterojunction. Current-voltage curves, spectral response and laser beam induced current maps have been used to characterize the IBC-SHJ cells. It was found that the IBC-SHJ cell has non-linear illumination level dependence that correlates with measured minority-carrier lifetime. As the performance of these cells is very sensitive to the quality of passivation on front surface, they are ideally suited as a diagnostic tool for detailed characterization of surface passivation. Initial cell structures have achieved independently confirmed cell efficiencies of 11.8% under AM 1.5 illumination. Device simulation shows that an efficiency of higher than 20% can be expected after optimizing the IBC-SHJ cells.