Prediction of sub-pyramid texturing as the next step towards high efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells

FH Chu and XL Qu and YC He and WL Li and XQ Chen and ZL Zheng and M Yang and XN Ru and FG Peng and MH Qu and K Zheng and XX Xu and H Yan and YZ Zhang, NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 14 (2023).

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39342-3

The interfacial morphology of crystalline silicon/hydrogenated amorphous silicon (c-Si/a-Si:H) is a key success factor to approach the theoretical efficiency of Si-based solar cells, especially Si heterojunction technology. The unexpected crystalline silicon epitaxial growth and interfacial nanotwins formation remain a challenging issue for silicon heterojunction technology. Here, we design a hybrid interface by tuning pyramid apex-angle to improve c-Si/a-Si:H interfacial morphology in silicon solar cells. The pyramid apex-angle (slightly smaller than 70.53 & DEG;) consists of hybrid (111)(0.9)/(011)(0.1) c-Si planes, rather than pure (111) planes in conventional texture pyramid. Employing microsecond-long low-temperature (500 K) molecular dynamic simulations, the hybrid (111)/(011) plane prevents from both c-Si epitaxial growth and nanotwin formation. More importantly, given there is not any additional industrial preparation process, the hybrid c-Si plane could improve c-Si/a-Si:H interfacial morphology for a-Si passivated contacts technique, and wide-applied for all silicon-based solar cells as well. The unexpected crystalline silicon epitaxial growth and interfacial nanotwins formation remain a challenging issue for silicon heterojunction technology. Here, the authors design a hybrid interface by tuning pyramid apex-angle to improve c-Si/a-Si:H interfacial morphology in silicon solar cells.

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