Impact of interstitial oxygen trapped in silicon during plasma growth of silicon oxy-nitride films for silicon solar cell passivation

Low temperature oxidation of silicon in plasma ambient is a potential candidate for replacing thermally grown SiO2 films for surface passivation of crystalline silicon solar cells. In this work, we report the growth of silicon oxy-nitride (SiOxNy) film in N2O plasma ambient at 380 degrees C. However, this process results in trapping of interstitial oxygen within silicon. The impact of this trapped interstitial oxygen on the surface passivation quality is investigated. The interstitial oxygen trapped in silicon was seen to decrease for larger SiOxNy film thickness. Effective minority carrier lifetime (tau(eff)) measurements on n-type float zone silicon wafers passivated by SiOxNy/silicon nitride (SiNv:H) stack showed a decrease in seff from 347 mu s to 68 mu s, for larger SiOxNy film thickness due to degradation in interface properties. From high frequency capacitance-voltage measurements, it was concluded that the surface passivation quality was governed by the interface parameters (fixed charge density and interface state density). High temperature firing of the SiOxNy/SiNv:H stack resulted in a severe degradation in tau(eff) due to migration of oxygen across the interface into silicon. However, on using the SiOxNy/SiNv:H stack for emitter surface passivation in screen printed p-type Si solar cells, an improvement in short wavelength response was observed in comparison to the passivation by SiNv:H alone, indicating an improvement in emitter surface passivation quality. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.