Hydrogen-doped indium oxide/indium tin oxide bilayers for high-efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells

L. Barraud, Z. C. Holman*, N. Badel, P. Reiss, A. Descoeudres, C. Battaglia, S. De Wolf, C. Ballif

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

169 Scopus citations

Abstract

The front transparent conductive oxide layer is a source of significant optical and electrical losses in silicon heterojunction solar cells because of the trade-off between free-carrier absorption and sheet resistance. We demonstrate that hydrogen-doped indium oxide (IO:H), which has an electron mobility of over 100 cm2/V s, reduces these losses compared to traditional, low-mobility transparent conductive oxides, but suffers from high contact resistance at the interface of the IO:H layer and the silver front electrode grid. This problem is avoided by inserting a thin indium tin oxide (ITO) layer at the IO:H/silver interface. Such IO:H/ITO bilayers have low contact resistance, sheet resistance, and free-carrier absorption, and outperform IO:H-only or ITO-only layers in solar cells. We report a certified efficiency of 22.1% for a 4-cm2 screen-printed silicon heterojunction solar cell employing an IO:H/ITO bilayer as the front transparent conductive oxide.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)151-156
Number of pages6
JournalSolar Energy Materials and Solar Cells
Volume115
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the European Community's FP7 Programme under the 20plµs Project (Grant agreement No. 256695 ), the Swiss Federal Energy Office, and Axpo Naturstrom Fonds, Switzerland . We gratefully acknowledge Roth and Rau Switzerland for both financial support and wafer preparation. We thank Fernando Zicarelli for his screen-printing expertise.

Keywords

  • Contact resistance
  • Indium oxide
  • Indium tin oxide
  • Silicon heterojunction
  • Solar cell
  • Transparent conductive oxide

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
  • Surfaces, Coatings and Films

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Hydrogen-doped indium oxide/indium tin oxide bilayers for high-efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this