Impact of pre-fabrication treatments on n-type UMG wafers for 21% efficient silicon heterojunction solar cells

Abstract

Silicon heterojunction solar cells achieve high conversion efficiency due to the excellent surface passivation provided by the hydrogenated intrinsic amorphous silicon films. However, they require a high-quality wafer as a starting material because their low-temperature processing does not allow for gettering. Czochralski-grown upgraded metallurgical-grade (UMG-Cz) silicon is a low-cost alternative to electronic-grade silicon for silicon solar cells, but is often limited in lifetime by grown-in defects. We have previously shown that pre-fabrication treatments, namely tabula rasa, phosphorus diffusion gettering, and hydrogenation, can significantly improve the bulk quality of UMG-Cz wafers. These help to mitigate the impact of grown-in oxygen precipitate nuclei and metallic impurities. In this work, we fabricate rear-junction silicon heterojunction solar cells on both as-grown and pre-treated UMG-Cz and electronic-grade wafers. We show that pre-fabrication treatments have a marked impact on solar cell efficiencies. With pre-fabrication treatment, the efficiency improves from 18.0% to 21.2% for the UMG-Cz cells and 21.2%–22.7% for the electronic-grade cells. Comparison of the open-circuit voltages of the as-grown and pre-treated UMG-Cz and electronic-grade cells using Quokka simulations reveals that the bulk lifetime remains the primary limiting factor for the UMG-Cz wafers.