Isolating p- and n-Doped Fingers With Intrinsic Poly-Si in Passivated Interdigitated Back Contact Silicon Solar Cells

Abstract

Polycrystalline silicon on silicon oxide (poly - Si/SiO x ) passivating contacts enable ultrahigh-efficiency interdigitated back contact silicon solar cells. To prevent shunt between n- and p-type-doped fingers, an insulating region is required between them. We evaluate the use of intrinsic poly - Si for this isolation region. Interdigitated fingers were formed by plasma deposition of doped hydrogenated amorphous silicon through mechanically aligned shadow masks on top of a full-area intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon ( a -Si:H) layer. High-temperature annealing then crystallized the a- Si:H to poly - Si and drove in the dopants. Two mechanisms were identified which cause contamination of the intrinsic poly - Si gap during processing. During deposition of doped fingers, we show using secondary ion mass spectrometry and conductivity measurements that the intrinsic gap becomes contaminated by doped a- Si:H tails several nanometers thick to concentrations of ∼1020 cm−3. Another source of contamination occurs during high-temperature annealing, where dopants desorb from doped regions and readsorb onto intrinsic a- Si:H. Both pathways reduce the resistivity of the intrinsic gap from ∼105 to ∼10−1 Ω·cm. We show that plasma etching of the a- Si:H surface before crystallizing with a capping layer can eliminate the contamination of the intrinsic poly-Si, maintaining a resistivity of ∼105 Ω·cm. This demonstrates masked plasma deposition as a dopant patterning method for Si solar cells.