Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

CuO Film as a Recombination Blocking Layer: a Unique Approach for the Efficiency Improvement of Si Solar Cells

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Silicon Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Increasing global demand for energy is inevitable. As energy dependence increases, more stable and efficient forms of energy are needed. Solar energy is the only viable renewable energy source that can meet this growing global demand. But low conversion efficiency is the major challenge for the solar cell devices. Therefore, to achieve better efficiency, CuO is introduced first time as a tunnel oxide passivated layer in this research work. Incorporation of CuO as a tunnel oxide layer between the substrate and base is the unique feature of this proposed work. The CuO tunnel oxide layer acts as an interface passivation layer and restrict the recombination of electrons and holes near the back contact. As a result, the recombination at the contact reduces which ultimately increases the minority charge carrier’s lifetimes in the solar cell, and hence enhances the open circuit voltage (Voc) from 0.71 to 0.76 V and the efficiency from 21.98 to 23.84% of the solar cell.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Data Availability

The article submitted is an original work and has neither been published in any other peer-reviewed journal nor is under consideration for publication by any other journal.

I hereby certify that I am authorized to sign this document in my own right. And authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

  1. Romer U, Peibst R, Ohrdes T, Lim B, Krugener J, Bugiel E, Wietler T, Brendel R (2014) Recombination behavior and contact resistance of n+ and p+ poly-crystalline Si/monocrystalline Si junctions. Sol Energy Mater Sol Cells 131:85–91

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Yan D, Cuevas A, Bullock J, Wan Y, Samundsett C (2015) Phosphorus-diffused polysilicon contacts for solar cells. Sol Energy Mater Sol Cells 142:75–82

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Rohatgi A, Zimbardi F, Rounsaville B, Benick J, Stradins P, Norman A, Lee B, Upadhyaya A, Ok YW, Tao Y, Tam A (2017) Overcoming the fundamental bottlenecks to a new world-record silicon solar cell. Final Technical Report (No. DOE-GT-6336),” Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)

  4. Green MA, Dunlop ED, Hohl-Ebinger J, Yoshita M, Kopidakis N, Ho-Baillie AW (2020) “Solar cell efficiency tables (Version 55). Prog Photovoltaics Res Appl 28:3–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Younis IM (2019) Cost benefit analysis of photovoltaic technology adoption at rest and service area for malaysia highway. Doctoral dissertation, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

  6. Lauinger T, Schmidt J, Aberle AG, Hezel R (1996) Record low surface recombination velocities on 1 Ω cm p-silicon using remote plasma silicon nitride passivation. Appl Phys Lett 68:1232–1234

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Grant NE, Markevich VP, Mullins J, Peaker AR, Rougieux F, Macdonald D, Murphy JD (2016) Permanent annihilation of thermally activated defects which limit the lifetime of float-zone silicon. Physica status solidi (a) 213:2844–2849

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Peibst R, Romer U, Larionova Y, Rienäcker M, Merkle A, Folchert N, Reiter S, Turcu M, Min B, Krugener J, Tetzlaff D, Bugiel E, Wietler T, Brendel R (2016) Working principle of carrier selective poly-Si/c-Si junctions: Is tunnelling the whole story? Sol Energy Mater Sol Cells 158:60–67

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Imran H, Abdolkader TM, Butt NZ (2016) Carrier-Selective NiO/Si and TiO2/Si contacts for silicon heterojunction solar cells. IEEE Trans Electron Devices 63(9):3584–3590

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Rohatgi A, Rounsaville B, Ok YW, Tam AM, Zimbardi F, Upadhyaya AD, Tao Y, Madani K, Richter A, Benick J, Hermle M (2017) Fabrication and modeling of high-efficiency front junction n-type silicon solar cells with tunnel oxide passivating back contact. IEEE J Photovoltaics 7(5):1236–1243

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Borden P, Xu L, McDougall B, Chang CP, Pysch D, Voisin P, Glunz SW (2008) Polysilicon Tunnel Junctions as Alternatives to Diffused Junctions, in: Proceedings of the 23rd EU-PVSEC, pp. 1149–1152

  12. Yan D (2016) Heavily doped carrier-selective regions for silicon solar cells (PhD thesis). The Australian National University, Canberra

  13. Kerr MJ, Schmidt J, Cuevas A, Bultman JH (2001) Surface recombination velocity of phosphorus-diffused silicon solar cell emitters passivated with plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposited silicon nitride and thermal silicon oxide. J Appl Phys 89:3821–3826

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Verma M, Mishra GP (2021) Effect of 1-D silver grated electrode on wafer-based TOPCon c-Si solar cell. Silicon 14:3439–3448

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Verma M, Mishra GP (2020) An integrated GaInP/Si dual-junction solar cell with enhanced efficiency using TOPCon technology. Appl Phys A Mater Sci Process 126:661

  16. Ravindra P, Mukherjee R, Avasthi S (2017) Hole-selective electron-blocking copper oxide contact for silicon solar cells. IEEE J Photovoltaics 7:1278–1283

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Wanninayake AP, Gunashekar S, Li S, Church BC, Abu-Zahra N (2015) Performance enhancement of polymer solar cells using copper oxide nanoparticles. Semicond Sci Technol 30, pp. 064004–1–7

  18. Yoo D, Lee D, Park J, Ahn J, Kim SH, Lee D (2019) Porosity control of nanoporous CuO by polymer confinement effect. Scripta Mater 162:58–62

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Miao X, Wang S, Sun W, Zhu Y, Du C, Ma R, Wang C (2019) Room-temperature electrochemical deposition of ultrathin CuOx film as hole transport layer for perovskite solar cells. Scripta Mater 165:134–139

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Siddiqui H, Qureshi MS, Haque FZ (2016) Valuation of copper oxide (CuO) nanoflakes for its suitability as an absorbing material in solar cells fabrication. Optik 127:3713–3717

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Sahoo GS, Mishra GP (2018) Design and modeling of an SJ infrared solar cell approaching upper limit of theoretical efficiency. Int J Modern Physics B 32:1850014–1–15

  22. Silvaco ATLAS User manual.

  23. Sahoo GS, Routray S, Pradhan KP, Mishra GP (2021) Electrical, optical, and reliability analysis of QD-embedded kesterite solar cell. IEEE Trans Electron Devices 68:5518–5524

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. Sahoo GS, Mishra GP (2019) Use of InGaAs/GaSb quantum ratchet in pin GaAs solar cell for voltage preservation and higher conversion efficiency. IEEE Trans Electron Devices 66:153–159

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Sahoo GS, Mishra GP (2020) Design and modelling of InGaP/GaSb tandem cell with embedded 1-D GaAs quantum superlattice. IET Circuits Devices Syst 14:471–476

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Sahoo GS, Mishra GP (2021) Use of hetero intrinsic layer in GaAs P-I-N solar cell to improve the intermediate band performance. Mater Sci Eng B 263:114862–1–11

  27. Knapp E et al (2012) The role of shallow traps in dynamic characterization of organic semiconductor devices. J Appl Phys 112:024519

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Roy A, Majumdar A (2022) Optimization of CuO/CdTe/CdS/TiO2 solar cell efficiency: A numerical simulation modeling. Optik 251:168456

  29. Li L, Du G, Zhou X, Lin Y, Jiang Y, Gao X, Lu L, Li G, Zhang W, Feng Q, Wang J (2021) Interfacial engineering of Cu2O passivating contact for efficient crystalline silicon solar cells with an Al2O3 passivation layer. ACS Appl Mater & Interfaces 13(24): 28415–28423

  30. Xinbo Y et al (2016) High-performance TiO2-based electron-selective contacts for crystalline silicon solar cells. Adv Mater 28:5891–5897

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Zhang Z et al (2018) Carrier transport through the ultrathin silicon-oxide layer in tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) c-Si solar cells. Sol Energy Mater Sol Cells 187:113–122

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  32. Sangho K et al (2018) Improving the efficiency of rear emitter silicon solar cell using an optimized n-type silicon oxide front surface field layer. Sci Rep 8:1–10

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronics Engineering (SENSE), Vellore Institute of Technology, Vandalur-Kellambakkam Road, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600127, India

    G. S. Sahoo & A. Tripathy

  2. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Aditya Engineering College, Surampalem, 533437, India

    C. Harini, N. Mahadevi & P. S. Nethra

  3. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 603203, India

    M. Verma

  4. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology Raipur, G.E. Road, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, 492010, India

    G. P. Mishra

Authors
  1. G. S. Sahoo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. C. Harini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. N. Mahadevi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. P. S. Nethra
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. A. Tripathy
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. M. Verma
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. G. P. Mishra
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

Dr. Girija Shankar Sahoo conceived and designed the simulation and written the manuscript; Chalumuri Harini, Nagireddy Mahadevi, Parasa Sri Nethra performed the simulation study and generated the output; Dr. Girija Shankar Sahoo, and Dr. Ashis Tripathy modified the manuscript and analyzed the data; Dr. Manish Verma and Dr. Guru Prasad Mishra contributed by providing the Silvaco tool; all authors reviewed the entire manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to G. S. Sahoo.

Ethics declarations

Ethics Approval

For the submission of an article to “Silicon”, I hereby certify that:

a) I have been granted authorization by my co-authors to enter into these arrangements.

b) I hereby declare, on behalf of myself and my co-authors, that:

I am/we are the sole author(s) of the article and maintain the authority to enter into this agreement and the granting of rights to “Silicon” does not infringe any clause of this agreement.

c) This study does not contain any human or animal subjects for data analysis.

Consent to Participate

All authors have been personally and actively involved in substantial work leading to the paper, and will take public responsibility for its content.

Consent for Publication

A) The manuscript submitted has been prepared according to the journal’s “Aims & Scope” and “Instructions for Authors” and checked for all possible inconsistencies and typographical errors.

b) On submission of the manuscript, the authors agree not to withdraw the manuscript at any stage prior to publication.

Competing Interests

All the authors are agreeing for publication. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Sahoo, G.S., Harini, C., Mahadevi, N. et al. CuO Film as a Recombination Blocking Layer: a Unique Approach for the Efficiency Improvement of Si Solar Cells. Silicon 15, 4039–4048 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-023-02331-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-023-02331-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation