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Surface and bulk passivation of multicrystalline silicon solar cells by ...

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ABSTRACT<br />

SURFACE AND BULK PASSIVATION OF MULTICRYSTALLINE SILICON<br />

SOLAR CELLS BY SILICON NITRIDE (H) LAYER: MODELING AND<br />

EXPERIMENTS<br />

<strong>by</strong><br />

Chuan Li<br />

The objective <strong>of</strong> this dissertation is to study <strong>passivation</strong> effects <strong>and</strong> mechanisms in Si<br />

<strong>solar</strong> <strong>cells</strong>, specifically, the surface <strong>and</strong> <strong>bulk</strong> <strong>passivation</strong> <strong>by</strong> hydrogen-rich PECVD<br />

<strong>silicon</strong> nitride (SiΝ :Η) antireflection layer on <strong>multicrystalline</strong> <strong>silicon</strong> (me-Si) <strong>solar</strong> <strong>cells</strong>.<br />

The <strong>passivation</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>silicon</strong> surface can be achieved in two ways: <strong>by</strong> field-effect<br />

<strong>passivation</strong> <strong>and</strong>/or <strong>by</strong> neutralization <strong>of</strong> interface states. In other words, the deposition<br />

should result in a high value <strong>of</strong> fixed charge, Qf <strong>and</strong> /or a low value <strong>of</strong> interface state<br />

density, D1. The surface recombination velocity can be described <strong>by</strong> Shockley-Read-Hall<br />

(SRH) statistics.<br />

Current SRH formalisms have failed to explain the surface recombination<br />

mechanism in terms <strong>of</strong> injection level dependence as has been observed <strong>by</strong> lifetime<br />

measurements. Previous SRH modeling result shows that very high Qf (up to several<br />

10 12/cm2) on the surface <strong>of</strong> Si wafer, induced <strong>by</strong> SiN X:H layer, leads to no injection level<br />

dependence <strong>of</strong> surface recombination velocity (SRV), which is in contradiction to<br />

experimental results. An alternative approach is needed to address this problem.<br />

A modified SRH formalism which includes the carrier recombination in the<br />

space-charge region was developed in this thesis to evaluate the recombination<br />

mechanism at SiΝ :Η-Si interface. Numerical modeling results indicate that, at low<br />

injection-levels, carrier recombination in the damaged layer is the dominant mechanism

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