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We have studied the impact of mesa sidewall passivation by SiO2 on characteristics of III-nitride/silicon tandem solar cells. These dual junction solar cells were fabricated from standard n-type Si (111) substrates with III-nitride epitaxial layers grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PAMBE). Photovoltaic testing was experimentally carried out under a solar simulator before and after the...
In this paper, we investigated the assembly characterization for reliability test. The structure of a glass interposer with two RDL on the front-side and one RDL on the backside had been evaluated and developed. Key technologies, including via fabrication, topside RDL formation, micro-bumping, temporary bonding, glass thinning and backside RDL formation, were developed and integrated to perform well...
We report effective passivation of silicon surfaces by heating single crystalline silicon substrates in liquid water at 110°C for 1 h. High values of photo-induced effective minority carrier lifetime τeff were obtained ranging from 8.3×10−4 to 3.1×10−3 s and from 1.2×10−4 to 6.0×10−4 s over the area of 4 inch sized n- and p-type samples, respectively, while values of τeff of initial bare samples were...
Reducing the thickness of crystalline Si wafers to be processed into solar cells yields several significant benefits: PV module manufacturing cost can be reduced and the required diffusion length of minority carriers is smaller. The latter in turn enables a higher efficiency potential and a larger spread of Si materials to be employed for rear junction solar cell concepts which are advantageous for...
A high cell performance is one of the key drivers to reduce the levelized cost of electricity for PV. Nevertheless, the production costs of a solar cell technology have to be low, to allow a market entry. A both sides-contacted solar cell can potentially fulfill both requirements. In this work we present the latest results of our DOE FPACE project: A both sides-contacted n-type solar cell with a passivated...
In this paper break-through results on our 6″ industrial Mercury cells are presented. We gained more than 1% absolute in efficiency by optimizing the processes and design of the cells, resulting in 20.9% cell efficiency. We used standard industrial equipment and the number of process steps similar to our commercial n-Pasha technology. The screen-printed IBC cells can be interconnected by our proven...
Previously, an innovative way to reduce rear interface recombination of Cu(In,Ga)(S,Se)2 (CIGSSe) solar cells has been successfully developed. In this work, this concept is established in Cu2(Zn,Sn)(S,Se)4 (CZTSSe) cells, to demonstrate its potential for other thin-film technologies. Therefore, ultra-thin CZTS cells with an Al2O3 rear surface passivation layer having nano-sized point openings are...
The damage on the Si wafer surfaces, caused by ingot cutting, is determined from measurement of minority carrier lifetime (τeff). Samples are sequentially etched to remove thin layers from each surface and lifetime is measured after each etch step. The thickness-removed at which the lifetime reaches a peak value corresponds to the damage depth. This technique also allows the depth distribution of...
The measurement of minority carrier lifetime of silicon in chemical passivation studies is often taken with the wafer in solution. We show that variations in the optical constant and inductive coupling to the wafer, as well as the presence of the liquid solution, will lead to discrepancies in the measured lifetime of the wafers. Continued deterioration of lifetime is observed when wafers are in the...
Strong evidence is provided for the critical role of hydrogen in the permanent passivation of boron-oxygen (B-O) defects in silicon. In particular, the impact of rapid thermal processing (firing), plasma exposure and hydrogen-containing dielectrics (PECVD SiNx:H) are explored. Importantly, no B-O passivation is observed in bare-fired wafers, regardless of exposure to hydrogen-rich plasma, whereas...
A stress engineered nano-channel (NC) In0.17Al0.83N/GaN T-gate Fin-High-Electron-Mobility Transistor (Fin-HEMT) exhibited a very high IDmax of >3900 mA/mm, a highest gm of >1410 mS/mm and Vth of −3.31 V at VD= 6V with good pinch-off characteristics. This dramatic increase of ID, gm and extracted electron velocity (νe) of 6.0×107 cm/s in the In0.17Al0.83N/GaN NC Fin-HEMT is due to the tensile...
Deformations of metal interconnects, cracks in interlayer dielectrics and passivation layers in combination with plastic packaging are still a major reliability concern for integrated circuit power semiconductors. In order to describe and understand the failure mechanism and its root cause, already a lot of work has been done in the past. However for the first time it is demonstrated that stress induced...
In this paper, particularities of ordered silicon nanopillars (Si NP) arrays formation by mean electron beam lithography and dry etching were studied. The optical and electrical properties of the Si NPs were investigated.
Two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted a great deal of attention for use in a variety of electronic and photonic applications. The layered crystal structure in these materials offers an ultra-thin or even monolayer body thickness, which could reduce short channel effects allowing improved transistor scaling compared to conventional bulk materials. In order to use these 2D materials in complementary...
In this work, the implementation of an electron-selective TiO2 contact into n-type silicon solar cells is presented for the first time. The surface passivation performance of atomic layer deposition (ALD) ultrathin TiO2 on n-type silicon is investigated. Ultrathin TiO2 film is shown to afford good passivation to non-diffused n-type silicon surface. N-type silicon solar cell with an efficiency of up...
Surface coating with a wide-angle antireflection property is an appealing solution to utilizing sunlight obliquely incident to solar panels. Here we experimentally demonstrate an increased output power of a hybrid nanopillar (NP) array solar cell compared to a pyramidal-textured cell. The conversion efficiency of a hybrid NP array cell (14.1%) is higher than that of a pyramidal-textured cell (12.3%)...
This is to study on the feasibility of photo-carrier generation at amorphous-silicon (a-Si) insertion layer in silicon-nitride (SiNx)/a-Si stacked passivation system, which realizes extremely low surface recombination velocity (SRV). When the thickness of crystalline silicon (c-Si) becomes thinner than 100 ixm for reducing cell cost, the method collecting 100% sun light is to be very important. If...
Significant progress in surface passivation of phosphorus diffused n+ silicon surfaces is reported in this work using standard industrial inline plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposited (PECVD) silicon nitride (SiNx) films deposited on ultrathin (∼0.6 nm) chemically grown silicon oxide (SiOx). Record low emitter saturation current density (J0e) values of 10 and 22 fA/cm2 are reported for 170-Ω/sq...
A mechanism of the ultraviolet (UV)-induced degradation of SiNx:H passivation is investigated from the viewpoint of PECVD-induced defects. Due to the PECVD, the damaged layer with around 50 nm is formed near the Si surface. These defects are passivated with hydrogen atoms, resulting in low recombination velocity at this region. However, it is increased by the light irradiation and minority carrier...
In this work, we demonstrated a simple method to test the point contact design and determine the Surface Recombination Velocity (SRV) of the point contact solar cells from a single PL image. The thermally grown silicon dioxide is patterned by using lithographic means. The size, pitch and pattern of the point contact opening holes are varied in order to find the relationship between opening density...
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