Impact of the homogeneous junction breakdown in IBC solar cells on the passivation quality of Al 2 O 3 and SiO 2 : degradation and regeneration behavior

Abstract
Within the last years, many different approaches for the simplified fabrication of interdigitated back-contact (IBC) solar cells have been developed. Most of those concepts result in emitter and back-surface field (BSF) regions that are in direct contact to each other which leads to a controlled breakdown under reverse bias at the pn junction. In this work, the influence of the reverse breakdown on the passivation quality of AlO and SiO at the pn junction is investigated, not only shedding light on the degradation but also on the regeneration behavior of the cells. It was found that cells with AlO passivation on the back side degrade during reverse breakdown whereas sister cells with SiO passivation were rather unaffected. Consequently, the degradation seems to be related to the passivation layer. However, it is shown that the passivation can be regenerated even under normal operation condition. A possible explanation is the discharging of interface traps, which are getting recharged already at room temperature.

Citation
Müller R, Reichel C, Yang X, Richter A, Benick J, et al. (2017) Impact of the homogeneous junction breakdown in IBC solar cells on the passivation quality of Al 2 O 3 and SiO 2 : degradation and regeneration behavior. Energy Procedia 124: 365–370. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2017.09.311.

Acknowledgements
The authors want to thank Sonja Seitz, Andreas Lösel, Felix Schätzle, Antonio Leimenstoll, Karin Zimmermann, Astrid Seiler, Nadine Brändlin and Elisabeth Schäffer for sample processing, measurements, and technical support as well as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (contract number 0325292 „ForTeS“) and the European Union’s Seventh Programme (Grant No. 608498 “HERCULES”) for funding.

Publisher
Elsevier BV

Journal
Energy Procedia

Conference/Event Name
7th International Conference on Silicon Photovoltaics, SiliconPV 2017

DOI
10.1016/j.egypro.2017.09.311

Additional Links
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610217342820

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