Investigation of Nickel Oxide as Carrier-selective Interlayer for Silicon Solar Cell Contacts
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Xue, Muyu; Islam, Raisul; Chen, Yusi; Lu, Ching-Ying; Lyu, Zheng; Zang, Kai; Jia, Jieyang; Deng, Huiyang; Kamins, Ted; Saraswat, Krishna; Harris, James
- Source
- 2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (WCPEC) (A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC & 34th EU PVSEC) Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (WCPEC), 2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on. :2180-2182 Jun, 2018
- Subject
- Aerospace
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Photonics and Electrooptics
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Photovoltaic cells
Annealing
Silicon
Conductivity
Metals
Resistance
Photovoltaic systems
Carrierselective contacts
contact passivation
photovoltaic cells
- Language
Thin film crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells have been a potential candidate to reduce the capital expenditure associated with traditional silicon photovoltaic market. This paper presents the sputtered NiO$_{\mathbf {x}}$ to be a potential candidate as hole-selective layer for c-Si solar cell contacts. NiO$_{\mathbf {x}}$ has a very small valence band offset (VBO $) ( \sim 0.1$ eV) and a large conduction band offset (CBO) with Si $( \sim 2$ eV), which makes it a promising candidate for hole-selective interlayer materials to reduce the contact recombination. In this paper, the effect of annealing condition on the NiO$_{\mathbf {x}}$/Si interface quality is first evaluated by Hall resistivity measurement. Also, the transport of both majority and minority carriers due to NiO$_{\mathbf {x}}$/Si band alignment is investigated by transmission line measurement. Results in this paper show that the sputtered NiO$_{\mathbf {x}}$ can be an effective interlayer material for thin film c-Si solar cell contacts.