Tantalum Nitride Hole-Blocking Layer for Efficient Silicon Solar Cells

Xinbo Yang, Erkan Aydin, Hang Xu, Jingxuan Kang, Wenzhu Liu, Yimao Wan, Christian Samundsett, Andres Cuevas, Stefaan De Wolf

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Minimizing carrier recombination losses at contact regions by using carrier-selective contact materials, instead of heavily doping the silicon, has attracted considerable attention for high-efficiency, low-cost crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells. Here we present a novel and stable metal nitride based hole-blocking layer for efficient silicon solar cells.The ALD-deposited tantalum nitride (TaNx) films are demonstrated to provide excellent holeblocking property on silicon surfaces, due to their small conduction band offset and large valence band offset with silicon. Thin TaNx films are found to provide not only moderate surface passivation to silicon surfaces, but also allow a relatively low contact resistivity at the TaNx n-Si heterojunctions. An efficiency over 20% is achieved on n-type silicon solar cells featuring a simple full-area electron-selective TaNx contact, representing an absolute efficiency gain of 4.0% over the control device without TaNxcontact.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2018 IEEE 7th World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (WCPEC) (A Joint Conference of 45th IEEE PVSC, 28th PVSEC & 34th EU PVSEC)
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Pages2087-2091
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)9781538685297
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 8 2018

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01

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