Abstract
Controlling the concentration of charge carriers near the surface is essential for solar cells. It permits to form regions with selective conductivity for either electrons or holes and it also helps to reduce the rate at which they recombine. Chemical passivation of the surfaces is equally important, and it can be combined with population control to implement carrier-selective, passivating contacts for solar cells. This paper discusses different approaches to suppress surface recombination and to manipulate the concentration of carriers by means of doping, work function and charge. It also describes some of the many surface-passivating contacts that are being developed for silicon solar cells, restricted to experiments performed by the authors.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 38-47 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells |
| Volume | 184 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2 2018 |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: A significant part of the work presented here has been conducted in collaboration with Ali Javey and co-workers at the University of California at Berkeley (USA), Stefaan De Wolf and co-workers at KAUST (Saudi Arabia), and Christophe Ballif and co-workers at EPFL (Switzerland), the latter also including Stefaan De Wolf before 2016. Josephine McKeon contributed to some of the experimental work at the ANU. We are also indebted to Daniel Macdonald, Sieu Pheng Phang and co-workers at the ANU for synergistic scientific and technological research on silicon solar cells. Funding from the Australian Government via ARENA (project RND003), ACAP (project on "Passivated contacts") and the ARC (DP150104331) is gratefully acknowledged.