25-cm2 glass-like transparent crystalline silicon solar cells with an efficiency of 14.5%

Abstract

Forming light-transmitting structures on c-Si photovoltaics to transmit visible light without wavelength dependency is a promising strategy to realize neutral-color transparent c-Si photovoltaics (c-Si TPVs). However, dry etching, which is used to form a light-transmitting structure on c-Si, inevitably causes nanoscale surface damages such as scallops and plasma-induced damage in c-Si. This aggravates carrier recombination, which decreases power conversion efficiency (PCE) of c-Si TPVs. Here, we propose an effective chemical treatment method for removing nanoscale surface damage from c-Si microholes. A large neutral-color c-Si TPV after the chemical treatment exhibits a high PCE of 14.5% at a transmittance of 20%. The chemical treatment also enables systematic control of the hole size (167 nm/s), and, thus, the transmittance is easily tuned from 10% to 70%. The proposed chemical treatment satisfies the three development factors of (1) high PCE, (2) opportunity for scale up, and (3) facile light transmittance tuning of c-Si TPVs.