Abstract
This work demonstrates the fabrication of silicide/silicon based solar cell towards the development of low cost and environmental friendly photovoltaic technology. A heterostructure solar cells using metallic alpha phase (α-phase) aluminum alloyed iron silicide (FeSi(Al)) on n-type silicon is fabricated with an efficiency of 0.8%. The fabricated device has an open circuit voltage and fill-factor of 240 mV and 60%, respectively. Performance of the device was improved by about 7 fold to 5.1% through the interface engineering. The α-phase FeSi(Al)/silicon solar cell devices have promising photovoltaic characteristic with an open circuit voltage, short-circuit current and a fill factor (FF) of 425 mV, 18.5 mA/cm2, and 64%, respectively. The significant improvement of α-phase FeSi(Al)/n-Si solar cells is due to the formation p+−n homojunction through the formation of re-grown crystalline silicon layer (~5–10 nm) at the silicide/silicon interface. Thickness of the regrown silicon layer is crucial for the silicide/silicon based photovoltaic devices. Performance of the α-FeSi(Al)/n-Si solar cells significantly depends on the thickness of α-FeSi(Al) layer and process temperature during the device fabrication. This study will open up new opportunities for the Si based photovoltaic technology using a simple, sustainable, and los cost method.
Highlights
Reliable, sustainable, and affordable renewable energy is critical to meet basic human needs[1,2]
Silicon microwire and nanowire based solar cells[9,10], heterojunction solar cells[11,12], Schottky junction solar cells such as graphene/silicon[13,14,15], CNT/silicon[16], and 2D material/silicon based solar cells[17] are few technologies that have demonstrated for the fabrication of high efficiency solar cell in a cost effective way
We demonstrate the fabrication of a novel solar cell using sputter grown α -phase FeSi(Al) ternary alloy and n-Si(100) substrate with a record efficiency (Eff ) and fill factor (FF) of ~5.1% and 63.5%, respectively
Summary
The interface quality of α-FeSi(Al)/n-Si was shown to depend on the annealing temperature and thickness of FeSi(Al) layer. A working solar cell device using α-FeSi(Al) and n-Si was demonstrated with promising photovoltaic properties. Photovoltaic parameters of α-phase FeSi(Al)/n-Si based solar cells were extracted using compact model. Interface quality and formation of thin film regrown silicon at the α-FeSi(Al)/ silicon interface were found to be crucial for the performance of α-FeSi(Al)/n-type silicon based solar cells. Nanoscale surface engineering through the formation of regrown silicon layer can boost the performance of the device remarkably. There is a tremendous scope to improve the performance of the reported solar cell device with the introduction of effective surface passivation using anti-reflection coating on α-FeSi(Al) layer. This study shows new opportunities for the Si based photovoltaic technology using a sputter deposition method and low temperature processing for the development of a simple, sustainable, and los cost photovoltaic technology
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