Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

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Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solmat

Silicon heterojunction solar cells: Recent technological development and T

practical aspects - from lab to industry
⁎
Jan Haschke , Olivier Dupré, Mathieu Boccard, Christophe Ballif
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Institute of Microengineering (IMT), Photovoltaics and Thin-Film Electronics Laboratory (PV-lab), Rue de la Maladière 71B,
CH-2002 Neuchâtel, Switzerland

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: We review the recent progress of silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells. Recently, a new efficiency world record
Silicon heterojunction review for silicon solar cells of 26.7% has been set by Kaneka Corp. using this technology. This was mainly achieved by
Implied fill-factor remarkably increasing the fill-factor (FF) to 84.9% - the highest FF published for a silicon solar cell to date. High
Simulation FF have for long been a challenge for SHJ technology. We emphasize with the help of simulations the importance
of minimised recombination, not only to reach high open-circuit voltages, but also high FF, and discuss the most
important loss mechanisms. We review the different cell-to-module loss and gain mechanisms putting focus on
those that impact FF. With respect to industrialization of SHJ technology, we discuss the current hindrances and
possible solutions, of which many are already present in industry. With the intrinsic bifacial nature of SHJ
technology as well as its low temperature coefficient record high energy production per rated power is
achievable in many climate regions.

1. Introduction laboratory PERC cell. The efficiency of the cell reported by Taguchi
et al., however, was still below 25% as a result of a relatively low short-
In recent years, an increasing number of silicon solar cells were circuit current ( JSC ). The most common approach to attain the highest
reported that feature energy conversion efficiencies greater than 25% possible JSC of solar cells is to place both carrier collecting contacts at
[1–6]. One key element that these solar cells all have in common is that the rear side of the solar cell, avoiding both shadowing by the metal
passivating contacts are used for charge carrier collection. Such con- contact grid as well as parasitic absorption in the front contact layers.
tacts enable high efficiencies through the reduction of recombination The latter is specifically limiting two-side contacted SHJ solar cells, due
by the displacement of the metal contact from the silicon surface. One to the high absorption coefficient of a-Si:H in the visible spectrum. We
possible approach is the use of silicon heterojunction (SHJ) contacts discuss this issue ( JSC for two-side SHJ) in Section 2.3.1.
formed by the deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) A challenge for back contacted SHJ solar cells is that only half of the
layers on the surfaces of the silicon absorber. Combining intrinsic a- wafer surface is available for contact formation. In combination with
Si:H layers (a-Si:H(i)) that provide excellent defect passivation at the the general challenge to obtain low-ohmic contacts with SHJ this ex-
silicon surface in stacks with p- or n-doped a-Si: H, enables the for- plains the reduction in FF of the IBC-SHJ solar cell presented by
mation of selective and passivating contacts. The achievement of fill- Masuko et al. [2] compared with the previous SHJ record [9]. Still, the
factors (FF) well above 80% has been for long a challenge for SHJ solar application of an all-back-contact architecture led to an increase in
cells in both academia and industry, while this was not the case for JSC and with an efficiency of 25.6% set a new record for c-Si solar cells
homojunction solar cells. Kinoshita et al. of the company Sanyo Corp. in 2014 [2].
(now Panasonic Corp.) were the first to publish a FF above 80% in 2011 In March 2017, Kaneka Corp. published their work on IBC-SHJ with
[7]. As can be seen from Fig. 1, at that time this was still 2 %abs below the first silicon solar cell exceeding 26% efficiency [10] with a FF of
the FF of the long-lasting world record obtained on a laboratory Pas- 83.8%. This high FF was enabled by a series resistance of only
sivated Emitter and Rear Contact1 (PERC) solar cell (FF = 82.9% [8]). 0.32 Ω cm2, demonstrating that very low-resistive contacts can be
It took until 2013 that Taguchi et al. from Panasonic Corp. published a achieved also with SHJ contacts. Later in 2017, further progress in ef-
SHJ solar cell with a FF of 83.2% [9], exceeding the FF of the ficiency was reported, culminating at 26.7% [4]. This cell featured an

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jan.haschke@epfl.ch (J. Haschke).
1
Also referred to as Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2018.07.018
Received 28 February 2018; Received in revised form 13 July 2018; Accepted 17 July 2018
Available online 07 August 2018
0927-0248/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
J. Haschke et al. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

86 is needed to provide lateral conductivity. Other than with diffused

junctions, the doped a-Si:H layers are laterally not conductive enough
fill-factor (%) 84 to fulfill this task. At the front side, the TCO serves also as an anti-
lab. PERC refection coating (ARC). For stand-alone SHJ solar cells, its thickness is
82 fixed to around 75 nm for optimal AR effect. When under glass, as in a
module, this shifts to lower thickness.
80
2-side SHJ
2.1. Possible device architectures
27 IBC-SHJ
efficiency (%)

26 To realize silicon heterojunction solar cells, different device archi-

tectures are possible of which the three most common are depicted in
25 lab. PERC Fig. 2. All have in common that they are intrinsically bifacial, which can
24 lead to 25–30% higher energy yield3 [16,17]. In the front junction
configuration (Fig. 2a), the minority charge carrier collecting contact is
23 situated at the front side of the solar cell absorber. Here, the minority-
2009 2012 2015 2018 charge-carriers are generated close to their collecting contact, which
year of publication enables higher short circuit current density for short-lifetime absorber
material. While this is explaining why the front junction configuration
Fig. 1. Recent progress of efficiency and fill-factor for SHJ solar cells. For is currently the most widely-used one in industry (Al-BSF are such
comparison, the long-lasting record of c-Si solar cells, a laboratory PERC cell
cells), it is of less importance for SHJ solar cells. As long as minority
[8], is included as dashed line.
charge carriers can reach their collecting contact, high current densities
can be obtained regardless of the position of the minority-charge-carrier
even higher FF of 84.9%, enabled by its very low series resistance of contact. High charge-carrier lifetimes in the absorber and excellent
only 0.2 Ω cm2 [1]. To reach such high FF, not only transport losses surface passivation are a prerequisite to obtain this condition. Both are
have to be minimal but also recombination in low injection conditions, obtained in SHJ solar cells due to the excellent surface passivation of a-
both in the silicon absorber as well as at its surfaces, needs to be suf- Si:H and the high-quality wafers used as absorber material.
ficiently low [11]. These aspects were not covered in previous review Therefore, SHJ solar cells enable other device architectures, in-
articles [12,13]. The impact of recombination in the silicon absorber on cluding with a minority-carrier-collecting contact on the rear side
the FF was covered by Leilaeioun & Holman, but the surface re- (Fig. 2c). Regarding SHJ solar cells, the rear junction4 configuration
combination was not considered in this paper [14]. enables the use of less conductive, and therefore more transparent TCOs
Therefore, in this review, we put focus on recent progress of the FF at the front side as lateral current transport can also take place in the
in SHJ solar cells. After introducing possible SHJ device architectures in wafer [19]. Furthermore, the contact formation for holes in SHJ is often
Section 2.1, we discuss the prerequisites to reach high FF with the help considered to be more delicate compared with the electron contact
of the simulation of implied JV characteristics considering recombina- [20]. Thus, placing the p-contact on the rear side enables the use of
tion both in the absorber and at its surfaces in Section 2.2.2. In Section different materials i.e. thicker or more highly doped at the cost of
2.3 we review the loss mechanisms affecting the JSC , VOC , and FF of SHJ transparency which would be a drawback in standard configuration.
devices, including resistive losses into our calculations (Section 2.3.3). Despite this theoretical advantage, we would like to point out that the
The impact of different interconnection technologies as well as binning highest reported efficiency of a two-side contacted SHJ (which is the
of cells with slightly different JV characteristics on the FF of a module is highest-efficiency two-side contacted large-area silicon solar cell) was
discussed in Section 3, while possible challenges for mass production obtained on an n-type wafer with the a-Si:H hole-contact at the front
are covered in Section 4. [11,21].
However, for both aforementioned configuration, even assuming
that fully transparent materials could be engineered to form the front
2. SHJ solar cell devices contact, still a front metal grid is needed, which will lead to current
losses due to shadowing. In order to tap the full efficiency potential,
Silicon heterojunction solar cells consist of a crystalline silicon both contacts have to be placed at the rear side of the solar cell. This, in
wafer that is passivated on both sides with stacks of intrinsic and doped addition, further broadens the spectrum of possible contact materials
hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) layers. As the conductivity of used as neither thickness nor transparency are limiting the choice. The
intrinsic a-Si:H is very low, its thickness should be as low as possible, most common approach to realize such a cell architecture is to form the
but a minimum thickness has to be retained to provide sufficient surface contacts for both polarities in an interdigitated pattern at the rear side
passivation (cf. Section 2.2.1). If at the front side,2 also the thickness of of the solar cell, described as interdigitated back contacts (IBC, Fig. 2d).
the doped a-Si:H layer should be as low as possible to reduce parasitic The omission of the thickness restraint for the doped layers results also
absorption (cf. Section 2.3.1). To fully exploit the potential, high- in an increased robustness towards sputter damage and can be bene-
quality silicon wafers featuring long charge carrier lifetimes have to be ficial for contact formation and band alignment [22–25].
used. High efficiencies can be obtained on both doping types [15]. The major challenge for the industrial production of IBC devices is
Nonetheless, most SHJ solar cells reported are based on n-type wafers the cost-efficient formation of both contacts at the rear side of the
due to its lower sensitivity towards impurities and the resulting superior wafer. Most IBC-SHJ devices reported so far rely on photolithograpy
charge carrier lifetimes [12]. [26,5,27]. The a-Si:H layers are either structured by doping-selective
With the very low surface recombination rates enabled by a-Si:H etching in alkaline solutions [5,27] or using additional layers as etching
passivation, minority-charge-carrier lifetimes in the range of several barriers [26,28]. Laser structuring in combination with sacrificial layers
milliseconds are obtained which enable open-circuit voltages well has also been investigated [29–31], the highest reported efficiency is
above 700 mV. At the front side, a metal grid is placed for charge carrier
transport. Below the grid, usually a transparent conductive oxide (TCO)
3
Depending on site characteristics like albedo and row-to-row spacing.
4
Often referred to also as so-called “rear emitter” configuration. As “emitter”
2
The front side is the side facing the sun. is a misnomer regarding PV [18], we use rear junction as identifier.

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J. Haschke et al. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

the excellent results recently obtained in several companies [35,1,5,2]

using an all-rear-contacted architecture indicate that this can be over-
come.

2.2. Recombination dynamics in silicon solar cells

2.2.1. Surface passivation with amorphous Silicon

The history of electronic-quality amorphous silicon can be traced
back to the findings of Chittick et al. from 1968, when they demon-
strated that intrinsic, highly resistive material could be grown from
plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD). The demon-
stration of doping by adding phosphorous and boron in the gas mixture
enabled this material to be used in solar cells, initially as absorber and
contact [36], later on as contact only for a silicon-wafer-based solar cell
in the heterojunction architecture. Excellent passivation relies on
atomically sharp interfaces between the crystalline silicon wafer and
the amorphous silicon layer. A high hydrogen content has also been
shown as necessary for best passivation results [37,38,12]. The prop-
erties of recombination-active defects at the surface of an a-Si:H-pas-
sivated wafer were studied in details in recent years, revealing that they
Fig. 2. Device architectures for SHJ solar cells. a) Front junction mono-facial are similar to bulk defects in a-Si:H [39,40]. This is linked to the fact
with minority-carrier-collecting contact on the front side, b) front junction bi- that, for thin layers, the charges photogenerated in the silicon wafer are
facial, c) rear junction bi-facial with minority-carrier-collecting contact on the sensitive to the defects through the whole bulk of the a-Si:H layer, the
rear, d) interdigitated back contacts (IBC) with charge carriers of both polarities
surface defect density (Dit ) corresponding to the projected defect den-
collected on the rear side.
sity of the film [39]. In recent years, the effect of light illumination on
the passivation properties of a-Si:H layers was studied and its kinetics
22.5% [31]. revealed, with clear indication that the effect of light soaking depends
An approach that drastically reduces processing steps is the com- on the passivating structure, passivation from intrinsic layers being
bination of in-situ shadow masking and the use of a recombination prone to light-induced degradation, whereas passivation from stacks of
junction [32–34]. Using such recombination junction, one of the doped intrinsic and doped layers are prone to light-induced improvement
layers can be applied on the full area, reducing to two the number of [41–43].
patterning steps (one for one of the contact, one for the electrode) and
one single alignment step [34]. In the case of this IBC configuration,
only half of the area is available for charge collection, making contact 2.2.2. Influence of charge carrier lifetime on device performance
resistance more problematic to reach low series resistance values. Yet, The device performance depends strongly on charge carrier lifetime.
Knowing the injection dependent recombination of the solar cell device

Fig. 3. Efficiency, fill-factor and VOC of implied JV-curves, calculated from charge carrier lifetime. a) For different defect concentrations and doping concentrations in
an n-type silicon absorber. b) For different interface state densities Dit and surface fixed charge densities Qf , assuming identical conditions for both absorber surfaces.

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is important, especially for the optimization of solar cells with passi- 2 mA/cm2 in the wavelength range between 300 nm and 800 nm due to
vated contacts. The upper limits for fill-factor and open-circuit voltage parasitic absorption at the front-side for a typical SHJ solar cell [53]
are set by charge carrier recombination and are referred to as implied with ITO as TCO. While charge carriers generated in the doped a-Si:H
values - iFF and iVOC . If there are no further losses, the parameters FF can be considered as fully lost due to the short diffusion length in the
and VOC are equal to iFF and iVOC . Ideally, recombination through defect material, it is reported that at least parts of the carriers generated in the
states in the absorber and at its surfaces is so low that iVOC and iFF are a-Si:H(i) layer are injected in the c-Si absorber and thus contribute to
limited by intrinsic recombination i.e. Auger and radiative re- JSC [53,54] Holman et al. estimate that 30% of the carriers contribute
combination. In Fig. 3, we show the impact of recombination in the to JSC [53], while Paduthol et al. report even 40% [54].
absorber (Fig. 3a) and at its surfaces (Fig. 3b) on the implied values of The general guideline to avoid parasitic absorption losses at the
VOC , FF, and efficiency, as obtained from the simulation of injection front is to reduce the optical thickness k ·t , i.e. either reduce the
dependent charge carrier lifetime. Details on the simulation can be thickness t or the extinction coefficient k of the front contact layer. A
found in A.2. reduction of k can be achieved by alloying a-Si:H with other elements
bulk
Regarding open-circuit voltage, the trap density in the bulk Ntrap such as carbon [55,56] or oxygen [57,58], to increase the band gap.
bulk Unfortunately, in the case of a-SiOx (n), the doping efficiency is reduced
needs to be sufficiently low to allow for charge carrier lifetimes τSRH of
at least 2 ms in order that VOC is close to the intrinsic limit. This limit with increasing oxygen content [59] and thus conductivity is decreased.
depends on the doping density in the absorber and decreases with in- As a result, the JSC gain is counterbalanced by a loss in FF and no ef-
creasing doping density. For lower lifetime absorber material (τSRH bulk
ficiency gain is achieved. More promising might be the application of a
< 500 μs), a higher doping density allows for higher VOC as can be seen two-phase material such as nanocrystalline silicon oxide (nc–SiOx :H). In
in Fig. 3. This is explained by the position of the quasi-fermi level of the such a material, a columnar nanocrystalline silicon phase providing
majority charge carriers, which is shifted closer to the band-edge, al- vertical conductivity is embedded in an amorphous silicon oxide matrix
lowing for higher VOC . This can be also beneficial for thinner absorbers, providing enhanced transparency [60,61]. For nc-SiOx:H(n) at the front
when long diffusion lengths are not mandatory [44]. side of a SHJ solar cell, a slightly higher efficiency compared with an
Also recombination at the surfaces can limit the VOC and is char- oxide-free nc-Si:H(n) reference is reported [62,63]. Also the use of na-
acterised by an interface state density5 Dit and a fixed charge Qf . For the nocrystalline silicon (nc-Si:H) is an option [20,64], due to the lower k of
simulations in this paper we chose identical Dit and Qf for both sur- nc-Si:H compared with a-Si:H in the short wavelength range.
faces. For typical values of Qf as chosen for the example shown in Fig. 3, At the rear side, parasitic absorption of photons of IR wavelength
bulk
iVOC follows a similar trend versus Dit as for a variation of Ntrap . can be reduced following the same approach, or with an advanced rear
The implied fill-factor iFF deviates earlier (for lower defect den- reflector design incorporating a low-refractive index material such as
sities) from its intrinsic limit compared with the iVOC . This can be seen MgF2 as optical spacer to reduce parasitic absorption of the evanescent
from Fig. 3, for both recombination in the absorber as well as at its wave in the back reflector. This approach was proposed by Campbell
surfaces. The prerequisites to reach a high iFF are therefore more de- et al. [65] and further elucidated [66] as well as experimentally shown
bulk
manding. While for iVOC , a τSRH of > 2 ms is sufficient to be limited by by Holman et al. [67].
bulk
intrinsic recombination, for iFF, τSRH needs to be . Similarly, Dit needs In terms of JSC the ideal device architecture is the IBC-SHJ. The
to be kept at a minimum to ensure high iFF. Low defect recombination absence of front contact grid and TCO, as well as the fact that front side
is thus primarily important to obtain a high iFF, as e.g. also pointed out layers with excellent passivation and no parasitic absorption can be
by Adachi et al. [11]. realized, enables maximum JSC . A possible problem for IBC-SHJ is so
called electrical shading [68,69] which occurs when minority charge
carriers are generated far from their collecting contact and recombine
2.3. Loss mechanisms and mitigation strategies due to insufficient effective diffusion length at the majority carrier
contact or in the silicon absorber.
2.3.1. Short-circuit current density In Fig. 4 we show the external quantum efficiencies (EQE) of a two-
Two-side contacted SHJ solar cells suffer intrinsically from short- side contacted and an IBC-SHJ solar cell. The most striking difference is
circuit current losses due to reflection at the front-contact grid. These the absence of parasitic absorption in the range of 300–600 nm for the
losses are eventually defined by the metalization technique used, as the IBC-SHJ, the absorber thickness for both cells is 160 µm. Also shown is
ideal geometry of the grid depends on the minimum possible finger the general impact of parasitic absorption in a front a-Si:H layer and
width and the resistivity of the lines. Using e.g. fine line double stencil parasitic absorption in the IR, simulated with increasing parasitic ab-
printing, finger widths down to 36 µm [46,47] are possible, while even sorption at the rear side of a 160 µm thick silicon absorber. Please refer
narrower lines down to 15 µm can be achieved using plating techniques to A.1 for more details.
[48,11]. Additionally, the sheet resistance of the TCO affects the ideal
geometry as a lower sheet resistance allows for wider finger spacing. 2.3.2. Open-circuit voltage
Yet, if the lower sheet resistance is achieved by increasing the carrier To reach high open-circuit voltage (VOC ) in a silicon solar cell, two
density, this induces higher parasitic absorption from free carriers, re- requirements need to be fulfilled:
ferred to as free-carrier absorption (FCA), specially for photons with (i) defect recombination needs to be low, enabling high excess
wavelengths beyond 800 nm. At the front side, this can be mitigated charge carrier density (that results in high implied VOC (iVOC )), and
using high mobility TCOs such as IO:H [49,50] or ICO:H [51,52] that (ii) selectivity at electron- and hole-contacts needs to be sufficiently
provide a sufficiently low sheet resistance despite a low free carrier high in order to achieve charge carrier separation and as a result a
density. potential difference between the contacts (high VOC ).
Besides reflection, parasitic absorption is an important current loss The high VOC is one of the key characteristics of solar cells with
mechanism for two-side SHJ solar cells. At the front-side, photons are passivating contacts. For commonly used high quality silicon absorbers,
absorbed in the a-Si:H and TCO layers. Holman et al. state a JSC loss of the VOC is usually well above 700 mV and, for a good device, limited by
intrinsic recombination (Auger & radiative).
5
For our simulations, the term surface state density would be more concise. As generally in SHJ solar cells the a-Si:H layers are only several
However, as in SHJ devices the absorber's surfaces are interfaces to the a-Si:H nanometers thin, the preservation of surface passivation after the a-Si:H
layers, we chose the term Dit . Note, that the absolute values of Dit depend also deposition is a challenge. Subsequent processes as e.g. the TCO de-
on the chosen capture cross sections - we use here the values of ref. [45], position can decrease the surface passivation. When sputtering is used
summarized in Table A1 in the appendix. for TCO deposition, ion bombardment and UV plasma luminescence

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J. Haschke et al. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

[23,24,80,22,25], or a combination thereof impede this conductivity

asymmetry, and cause selectivity—hence VOC —losses. A mismatched
TCO workfunction will lead to a depletion of the doped layers at the
interface between TCO and the doped layer (cf. band diagram in Fig. 5).
However, the parameter that is most affected in this case is the FF, as
discussed in Section 2.3.3.

2.3.3. Fill-factor
Losses in FF of a silicon solar cell can be triggered by the same
mechanisms as VOC -losses:
(i) recombination, and
(ii) insufficient conductivity σe/h of the respective contact's majority
carrier.
Regarding the losses due to recombination, the same principles that
Fig. 4. Experimental external quantum efficiencies (EQE) of a two-side con- impact VOC , as e.g. sputter damage also impact the FF by lowering the
tacted SHJ solar cell [11] and an IBC-SHJ [10]. Also shown are simulated implied FF (iFF) of the solar cell. As it leads to an increased Dit , sputter
curves assuming no reflection losses, and different levels of parasitic absorption damage is more detrimental to the iFF than to the iVOC , as shown in
at the front and at the rear, see A.1 for further details. Experimental EQE data Section 2.2.2. Lifetime at implied open circuit is indeed limited by
with kind permission of Kaneka Corp. Auger recombination to lower values than at implied maximum power,
making iFF more sensitive to surface recombination than iVOC . Re-
create defects in the a-Si:H [70–72] which reduces the surface passi- garding (ii), whereas for the VOC only the ratio σe/ σh of the conductivity
vation. Depending on the process conditions during sputtering [72,73], of electrons and holes at their respective contacts is important,7 for a
it can be possible to recover surface passivation with low-temperature high FF, the absolute values of σe (at the electron-contact) and σh (at the
(≤ 200 °C) annealing, however, in ref. [71] it was observed that the hole-contact) define if charge carrier transport is limited or not.
microstructure of the a-Si:H is irreversibly altered. Thicker a-Si:H can As can be seen in Fig. 6, certain FF values can be obtained by dif-
lead to a higher resistance against sputter damage [74] but is unwanted ferent combinations of iFF and ohmic transport losses. For example, a
at the front side due to parasitic absorption. A protecting TCO layer FF of 83.3% can be obtained assuming a wide range of series resistance
applied prior to sputtering with a damage-free technique such as atomic values between 0 Ω cm2 and 0.9 Ω cm2, depending on charge carrier
layer deposition (ALD) can fully prevent VOC loss due to sputter damage recombination dynamics and the resulting iFF. This is valid for both
when sufficiently thick [75]. Also other deposition techniques such as recombination in the absorber as well as at its surfaces. Yet, obviously,
ion plating can be used to reduce ion bombardment during TCO de- high FF can only be attained with a combination of low recombination
position [51]. and low series resistance.
Only relevant for academia, where often multiple small (< 9 cm2) In experimental SHJ solar cells, transport limitations are often not
solar cells are embedded in one wafer, the VOC of the measured cell can fully ohmic and can also be dependent of charge carrier injection level
be reduced during the measurement of the JV-curve through a mask as and temperature. Their characterization and analysis of SHJ devices
in the perimeter region of the cell, no charge carriers are generated and can thus be more challenging using classical analysis methods such as
charge carriers generated in the cell area diffuse in the dark perimeter the two-diode model. These methods, however, can still be helpful
region and recombine [76]. For a typical 4 cm2 SHJ solar cell, when when allowing e.g. for variable ideality factor n or recombination
measured with a shadow mask the VOC is about 10 mV lower compared prefactor J0 .
with a measurement with full-wafer illumination.6 The effect is reduced A strong temperature dependence of transport in SHJ solar cells is
with increasing area-to-perimeter ratio [77] and becomes negligible for caused when thermionic emission is limiting charge carrier transport.
typical SHJ cells with an area > 9 cm2. For example, when the a-Si:H(p) layer at the TCO/a-Si:H(p) interface is
Regarding full-wafer solar cells as used in production or industry- partly depleted (cf. Fig. 5), efficient tunneling from a-Si:H(p) to the TCO
oriented research, the passivation of the wafer edge becomes increas- is prevented, and a non-linear transport barrier is formed.8 Tunneling
ingly important the higher the VOC and efficiency of the solar cell. As an has been shown to be needed when modeling the a-Si:H/TCO contact
example, Kaneka Corp. reports on a SHJ cell on a full wafer (239 cm2) [25,81] and is an important transport mechanism in SHJ solar cells. The
with an efficiency of 24.5%, while to further improve efficiency, they a-Si:H layer depletion can occur due to a mismatched workfunction of
not only report on process improvements but reduced also the cell area the TCO [23,24,80,81] and is enhanced by insufficient thickness [24]
to 152 cm2, while still on a 6 in. wafer [11], for a two-side contacted and/or doping of the doped a-Si:H layer [25,23,82,83].
cell. Similarly, an IBC-SHJ solar cell with an efficiency of 26.3% for a One way to counteract the formation of such a transport hindrance
designated area measurement (180 cm2) is measured at 25.6% when is the application of nanocrystalline9 silicon (nc-Si:H) layers [64,20,63].
total area is taken into account [78], page 6. In this material, the fermi-level is closer to the valence or conduction
Besides sufficiently low recombination in the silicon absorber and at band compared with a-Si:H due to its increased doping efficiency. This
its surfaces to obtain a high excess charge carrier density, another re- facilitates the contact formation with the TCO, as it reduces the width of
quirement is to have contacts with sufficiently high selectivity for the the depletion region in the doped layer. It was reported by Nogay et al.
respective polarity. This allows to reach high VOC values, matching the that especially the hole contact (TCO/p) benefits from the increased
iVOC . Selectivity is obtained when the contact features a high difference conductivity [20], contact resistivities (for both electron and hole-
in conductivity for the two polarities [79]. For a-Si:H-based contacts,
insufficient doping and/or mismatched TCO work function 7
As there is no current flow in VOC , the absolute value of the conductivity is
not important. It is only important, that e.g. at the hole contact the conductivity
for electrons is much lower than the one of holes, and vice versa.
6
This is more pronounced if the perimeter region is electrically connected 8
Such a barrier is often described also as “diode” or “counter-diode”.
9
with a low resistance, as is e.g. the case for multiple rear junction cells when In literature, also the term microcrystalline is used for such materials. As
their rear metallization is connected via the measurement chuck during the JV grain-sizes are usually in the nanometer range in such materials, we use the
measurement. term nanocrystalline.

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J. Haschke et al. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

TCO a-Si:H(p/i) capped with ITO, making it possible to exploit its transparency as a
c-Si(n)
a-Si:H(i/n) TCO
EC window layer. Its instability to post-deposition annealing, and to some
Ef,n
extent to the electrode deposition make it difficult to integrate in de-
vices, though some strategies seem promising to enhance its robustness.
EV
Also, possibly due to the narrow window of (sub)stoichiometry for
dark, equilibrium 1 sun, SC Ef,p
which adequate conductivity, work function, and possibly defect den-
sity are obtained, no other technique than thermal evaporation was
successful so far in reaching similar efficiency as with evaporated ma-
terial in spite of multiple attempts [90,91]. The stability is also a con-
cern (and even more so) for electron contacts, with promising ap-
1 sun, OC 1 sun, MPP proaches usually incorporating TiO2 [87,88].
In addition to standard devices, IBC were also used for such con-
Fig. 5. Energy band diagrams of a SHJ device in equilibrium, short-circuit (SC), tacts, with the possibility of very simple 2-evaporation-step processes,
open-circuit (OC), and maximum power point (MPP) conditions. With the
demonstrating remarkable efficiencies in spite of the absence of passi-
conduction band edge EC , valance band edge EV and the quasi-Fermi-levels Ef,n
vation layers [92]. Implementing a passivation layer, further im-
and Ef,p for electrons and holes respectively.
provements were made possible leading to even higher efficiencies
[93].
contact) are reduced by a factor of three, and their temperature de- Another approach closer to organics is the use of organic compo-
pendence becomes less pronounced. nents, with PEDOT:PSS being the most successful hole-selective contact
[94,95], and dipole-inducing molecule being actively investigated as
2.4. Alternative materials for contact formation electron-selective contacts [96]. Such approaches have the advantage
of typically not requiring a vacuum deposition tool, potentially en-
In recent years a wide variety of novel materials have been in- abling very inexpensive processing. Yet the use of liquid organic solu-
vestigated as carrier-selective contacts for silicon heterojunction solar tions is not straightforward on a textured surface, and the modest ef-
cells. High-work-function metal-oxide lead the race for hole-selective ficiencies shown so far do not appear sufficient to compete with
contacts [84–87] whereas low-work-function metal-fluorides or even traditional solar cell manufacturing solutions. The overall working
metals are highly investigated electron-selective contacts [88,87]. Most principle of heterojunction solar cells using alternative materials ap-
efficient devices use an intrinsic amorphous silicon layer for passivation pears still even more mysterious than silicon-based heterojunctions,
[84,87] though excellent results could also be obtained with simpler with defect-assisted transport being thought as playing an important
architectures, notably through the use of TiO2 as electron-selective role [97].
contact [88].
A strong limitation of most electron-selective contact approach is
the need to use a low-work-function metal as the electrode leading to 2.5. Temperature dependence: theoretical limits & practical considerations
severe parasitic absorption of the IR light. This absorption is due to the
absence of a dielectric spacing layer between the silicon wafer and the In Fig. 7 we show the temperature dependence of iVOC and iFF as
metal, leading to strong plasmonic absorption [89]. This effect is obtained from our simulations. We assumed a perfectly passivated ab-
worsened by the fact that low-work-function metals such as aluminum sorber in this case (Dit = 0 cm−2). iVOC and iFF decrease both linearly
typically exhibit a poor reflection contrarily to e.g. gold or silver. Yet, with temperature, the relative temperature coefficients obtained from
the need to use such a low-workfunction metal to allow an efficient linear fitting are given in Table 1. As well-known from literature, the
carrier-selective contact stack shows that not only the contact layer but TCVOC increases with increasing VOC at 25 °C, the same holds true for
also the electrode play a strong role in the selectivity of a contact stacks. TCFF . The empirical models to describe VOC (T) and FF0 (T ) proposed by
On the hole-selective contact side, the most successful material has Green [99] describes the observed trends well as long as the ideality
been slightly substoichiometric molybdenum oxide (MoOx with x close factor is taken into account. For the comparison with experimental
to 3) prepared by thermal evaporation. It is very notable that in this data, we included also temperature-dependent VOC and FF of a SHJ solar
case, good solar cell results could be obtained even when this layer was cell in the Figure. The experimental data has been published earlier

Fig. 6. Contourplots of simulated FF. a) for tau bulk limited case, b) for Dit limited case, assuming Qfsymm = 5 × 1010 cm−2, Ntrap
bulk
= 1 cm−3 (no bulk defects), both
for 160 µm n-type absorber. Star: data point of experimental IBC-SHJ device (RS = 0.32 Ωcm2 , FF = 83.8%, η = 26.3%) from ref. [10].

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J. Haschke et al. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

3. SHJ solar modules

Several companies (e.g. Panasonic Corp., Meyer Burger) already

demonstrated that the good performances of SHJ solar cells can be
translated into highly efficient solar modules. An important metric for
module manufacturers is the so-called cell-to-module (CTM) power
ratio which is the module power divided by the sum of the power of its
constituent cells. CTM power ratios can vary greatly depending on
module type and features, e.g. white backsheet modules benefit from a
≈ 2% gain in short circuit current (ISC ) because of the light recollected
after reflection on the backsheet between the cells [103,104]. Advanced
interconnection techniques and improvements in light management at
the module level are pushing CTM factors upward and they are ex-
pected to exceed 100% by 2020 [105]. There is a number of CTM loss
and gain mechanisms (see e.g. [106,107]) and it is interesting to
identify those that affect the ISC and those that affect the FF of mod-
ules.
Fig. 7. Filled grey symbols: Simulated iVOC and iFF values versus temperature, The main optical loss phenomena is the reflection caused by the
assuming only recombination in the absorber. Orange open symbols: data of an refractive index mismatch at the glass/air interface, for standard solar
experimental two-side SHJ solar cell, taken from ref. [98]. The solid lines are glass this is about 4%. Different ARC layers can be used to reduce this
linear fits to the whole data range, the dashed line was fitted between 50 °C and loss, e.g. a porous SiO2 layer coated onto solar glass using industrial sol-
65 °C, and then extrapolated for lower temperatures. gel processes increases ISC by about 2.7% [108]. Another ISC loss is
caused by parasitic absorption in the encapsulant and can also take a
Table 1 range of values as there is a number of different encapsulants on the
Relative temperature coefficients of the data (simulation and experiment) market with various optical properties and different stabilities e.g. to
shown in Fig. 7, obtained from linear fitting between 15 °C and 65 °C. For the UV. The encapsulant has also a small positive effect on ISC , about
SHJ solar cell, the TCFF would amount to -0.08%K−1, when fitted only in the + 0.3%, as it acts like a dual-layer ARC. Additionally, as mentioned in
linear range of the curve (between 50 °C and 65 °C). Section 2, this implicates a lower TCO thickness to minimize reflec-
aTCVOC TCVOC TCFF tion.12 Another optical benefit from the encapsulation of solar cells is
mVK−1 %K−1 %K−1 the recollection of the fraction of light reflected on the metallization
that is redirected onto the cell by total internal reflection at the glass/
bulk
sim. τSRH = 10 ms − 1.80 − 0.24 − 0.06 air interface. This so-called optical coupling reduces the effective shading
bulk
sim. τSRH = 2 ms − 1.81 − 0.24 − 0.08 by the fingers by about 50% (depending on the finger shape) which in
bulk
sim. τSRH = 1 ms − 1.83 − 0.25 − 0.10 turn boosts ISC by about 1.5%. This light recollection mechanism is also
exp. SHJ cell − 1.81 − 0.25 − 0.05 important in reducing the shading by the interconnection and depends
on the interconnection shape. For example, the effective shading of
textured ribbons is typically half that of standard ribbons (this corre-
[98]. While the VOC of the experimental cell follows a linear trend as the sponds to an ISC gain around 1%). In multi-wire configurations, in
simulated data, the FF versus temperature curve is only linear for which the cell-interconnecting ribbons are replaced by round wires, the
temperatures above 50 °C. This can be seen from the linear fit between effective optical shading is only ≈ 60% of the wire diameter thanks to
50 °C and 65 °C that we extrapolated to lower temperatures. For tem- its circular shape.
peratures below 50 °C, the FF is lower than the extrapolated straight The main mechanism that affects the module FF is the ohmic loss in
slope. This behavior is typical for SHJ solar cells [100,101,20,83] and the cell interconnections (ribbons or wires), between the strings, in the
due to thermally enhanced current transport. This temperature depen- junction boxes and in the cabling. The main loss stemming from the cell
dence leads to a deviation from classical models for ohmic carrier interconnection whose design is driven by a trade-off between shading
transport, and is also partly responsible for the high10 TCFF reported for and ohmic losses as well as, for the industry, the price of metal and the
SHJ solar cells. However, in the case of the current world-record IBC- extra cost of features such as textured ribbons. To illustrate this, we
SHJ solar cell (FF25°C = 84.9%), we expect this effect to be negligible, simulate (see the details in Appendix B) the losses for two multi-wires
i.e. linear behavior for temperatures above 25 °C in view of the very configurations with different diameters: 250 µm and 300 µm. The
high FF obtained at 25 °C. The remaining R 25 s
°C
of probably11 below thicker wires cause more shading than their thinner counterparts (2.1%
0.2 Ω cm that could potentially be reduced at higher temperatures
2
versus 1.7%), but they also reduce series resistance so the ohmic loss is
[102] is so low, that temperature-dependent transport should play only significantly reduced (1.8% versus 2.7%). All in all, the 300 µm con-
a minor role at typical operating conditions (ϑ > 25 °C ). Deviation from figuration enables a better CTM power factor, + 0.5%, and the final
linearity for the FF might still occur but at temperatures lower than choice is then driven by economic considerations. Additionally, the
25 °C for this device [20]. climate where the modules are to be operated can be taken into con-
sideration in order to maximize energy yields. For example, in very
sunny and hot climates, it might be beneficial to lower RS even at the
expense of ISC while the opposite might be true for a module operating
10
at a location where the average incident irradiation is well below
The wording of high and low TC can be confusing as the TCs (except
1000 W m−2 [98].
TC JSC ) of silicon solar cells are usually negative. That means that a high abso-
The FF of a module is also affected by the so-called cell-to-cell
lute value of the TC is detrimental, but a high value (corresponding to a low
absolute value) is beneficial for operation higher than 25 °C.
11
The device with the highest efficiency (26.7%) has so far been only re-
12
ported in the efficiency Tables 50 [35], where no value for RS is given. We Note that the actual optimal TCO thickness remains a trade-off between
assume that with an RS of 0.2 Ω cm2 for a device with a FF of 84.6% [1], RS is anti-reflection, transparency and lateral conduction which depends upon the
probably even below 0.2 Ω cm2 for the new record. chosen metallization design.

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J. Haschke et al. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

mismatch loss, which originates from the connection in series of cells reactor, which would occur in open reactors when the plasma is
with different IV characteristics [109]. While it has been shown that, ignited and would lead to surface passivation inhomogeneity.
for modern industries, the cell-to-cell mismatch has a negligible effect ii) suppression of cross-contamination linked to the cleaning of the
on module power even without any cell binning [110]13, it has reactor, only required after some hundred or thousands of coating
nevertheless an interesting two-sided effect on module FF and ISC . cycles.
Fig. 8a exemplifies that the ISC of 60 cells connected in series is sys- • Availability of high-quality n-type silicon wafers at a competi-
tematically lower than the average ISC of these cells (closer to the tive price: A large fraction of the PV industry uses p-type wafers,
minimum ISC ). On the other hand, the FF of the serially-connected cells raising the question of the availability of high-quality n-type mate-
is larger than the average FF of the cells. This phenomena is important rial. Yet in recent years, triggered by the demand for higher p-type
to correctly analyze the CTM factors of modules even when the cell-to- material quality from the PERC market, most monocrystalline si-
cell mismatch is small. This is illustrated on Fig. 8b where the dis- licon ingot manufacturer developed know-how enabling them to
tributions of the CTM factors of power, FF and ISC are shown of 5000 also grow high quality full n-type ingots (e.g. typically with a life-
simulated modules comprised of cells with ISC in a 4% range. While the time/resistivity above 1 ms/Ω cm) at cost similar or only slightly
loss in power is low (CTM Pmpp around -0.15%), the cell-to-cell mismatch superior to those of p-type materials [122]. Additionally, even in the
causes a strong negative CTM ISC (≈−1%) partially counterbalanced by a case of multiple-charge pulls, metallic impurities and oxygen con-
positive CTMFF (≈+0.85%) [104]. This effect is important for a module centration can be kept at concentration sufficiently low for
manufacturer to accurately separate between ohmic and optical losses achieving high lifetime absorber material, without additional
(e.g. a good FF does not necessarily mean small resistive losses if the thermal donor treatment or gettering. A slightly higher price for n-
cell-to-cell mismatch in a particular module is large). type wafers compared to p-type wafers still come from less recharge
of the quartz crucible than for p-type materials (a problem on which
4. Industrial aspects companies are working), and can be fully compensated by the use of
thinner wafers possible for SHJ [122].
Sanyo Corp. (now Panasonic Corp.) was the first company to com-
mercialize SHJ solar cells, and produced for many years some of the
• Risk of high metallization costs: Because of the final annealing
step at around 200 °C, low-curing-temperature (low-T) silver pastes
most efficient c-Si modules with the lowest temperature coefficient are used. First generations of such low-T pastes exhibited a much
[111]. In the last few years, several companies have launched pilot lower conductivity than the pastes sintered for standard cells at over
production, or even mass production of SHJ solar cells. Some compa- 800 °C (up to a factor 10, in the late 2000's). Thanks to the con-
nies recycled parts of the equipment s designed for the production of tinuous improvement in the paste development [114], illustrated in
thin film silicon solar cells for depositing some of the SHJ layers. In Fig. 10, modern pastes are coming closer to bulk Ag, with resistiv-
parallel, several companies have started to design equipments specific ities in the range of 5–6 μΩ cm. This is fully compatible with the
for the manufacturing of SHJ solar cells and modules. The coating current cell configurations featuring five or six busbars, and
technologies include hot-wire and (parallel plate) PECVD for the a-Si:H minimum amount of paste consumption [123,124]. With the use of
layers and sputtering or ion plating14 [112,113] for the TCO deposition. multi-wire configurations, in which the ribbons are replaced by
For metallization, screen-printing of low-temperature silver paste, or round wires, the demand on finger conductance is further decreased
plating can be applied. The lean standard SHJ process (cf. Fig. 9) en- [114]: typcially 18 wires of ∼ 300 µm, embedded into a polymer
sures that only few pieces of equipment are required (wet chemical foil, solder on the soft Ag paste during the lamination process. Be-
preparation of the wafer, PECVD reactor for a-Si:H layers, PVD for TCO, cause of the very short distance between two wires, a potential to
screen-printing for the metallization, annealing) and has a potential to reduce the Ag consumption down to 10–20 mg per side of 6-in. cells
come both in terms of capital expenditures (CAPEX) and operational has been reported [123]. To entirely suppress the need for silver,
expenditures (OPEX) to a level similar to those of competing PERC copper plating has also been reported as an alternative approach,
technologies. Considering the potential of a high bifaciality factor and Fig. 11 shows a possible process to realize directly a bifacial Cu
(> 90%) [114], record low temperature coefficient and high energy metalization [48,114,125] which then has a low cost potential upon
yield15 [116], thinner wafer for lower costs, SHJ bears the potential to large-scale acceptance.
achieve ultra-low electricity costs. A mass market entrance has been
delayed though by many negative perceptions with respect to the dif-
• Risk of high costs of TCO: typically 80 nm of TCO are deposited at
the front and back of the SHJ. ITO targets are a major cost factor,
ficulty of the technology, which we discuss here below: corresponding typically to a usage of around 3.5 g of Indium per m2
of modules for both surfaces (taking into account a 50% usage of the
• Passivation homogeneity: A major perceived difficulty is the sputtered materials). Without even considering the recycling of In
achievement of homogeneous ultra-thin passivation layers based on deposited on the carriers and in the chamber, the cost of In is hence
a-Si:H in PECVD reactors, which might prevent the achievement of currently in the range of an acceptable $/m2 [126], corresponding,
high production yield. Indeed, such issues can be solved, e.g. by for a 335 W 60-cell module, to below 0.005 $/W. Alternative TCO
working on the PECVD reactor design [117–121]. The concept of such as Zinc oxide (ZnO) can also be used, in particular on the n-
closed heated plasma box [117,120] enables for example to solve side, where the wafer-bulk conductivity plays a major role. For the
two major issues: configuration with p-layer on the front, a thin high-mobility TCO
i) suppression of strong species diffusion near the edges of the can be used combined with a lower-cost TCO to divide altogether
the In consumption by a factor 4 (and 8 if Indium is recycled from
the chamber walls). Hence this does not constitute a more funda-
13
This study is based on IV data from 10,000 cells from a production order in mental problem than e.g. the use of Ag paste in standard c-Si cells
2012 from a Suntech manufacturing facility in China. and modules.
14
Ion plating is also referred to as high density plasma-enhanced evapora-
tion.
15 With the development of modern coating hardware [127,128],
Using ΔEY = ΔTC·(Tavg − TSTC ), gains in energy yield stemming from ad-
vantageous temperature coefficients can be estimated if the average operating highly efficient and cost-effective metallization scheme, the industry
temperature in terms of energy production expected in a given location, Tavg , is should have now many cards at hands to launch high volume manu-
known. For example, Tavg can reach 50 °C in desert areas in the American facturing of SHJ. Indeed, six inch SHJ solar cells made in a pilot line
Southwest [115] which means that a reduction of temperature coefficient of were certified at 24%, in the so-called busbar-less configuration (i.e.
0.1%/K results in an energy yield gain of 2.5% in such locations. without wire shading and without resistive losses in the wires,

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J. Haschke et al. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

Fig. 8. a) In grey: simulated IV curves of 60 cells with identical diode characteristics but for ISC randomly picked in a 4% range around 9.28 A. In red: simulated IV
curve of the module constituted of these 60 cells connected in series. b) Distributions of the CTM factors of power, FF and ISC of 5000 simulated modules comprised of
cells with ISC in a 4% range from ref. [104].

Fig. 11. Process-flow of copper electroplating for a bifacial SHJ solar cell.
Image courtesy of J. Geissbühler, CSEM [48,125].

Fig. 9. Manufacturing steps of a bifacial silicon heterojunction solar cell.

18
Specific bulk resistivity (μΩ cm)

16
14
12
10
Ag paste
8 after 30min curing Fig. 12. Certified IV characteristic of a 60-cells (M2) module integrating SHJ
at 180°C solar cells and a white back-foil. The peak power of the module is 335 W. The
6 at 200°C
cells were processed in the pilot-line of the Meyer Burger group in Hohenstein
4 bulk Ag (DE) and the multi-wire interconnection is a new generation one, co-developed
2 between CSEM and Meyer Burger Thun (CH). It uses wires without indium,
0 allowing for low assembly and metallization costs. This is the highest reported
2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018 performance for a module of this type.
Year

Fig. 10. Specific bulk resistivity of low-temperature Ag paste as a function of

the year. Pure silver (horizontal line) is included as well for comparison. The free from potential induced degradation (PID), and with the right
continuous line indicates the resistivity after 30 min of curing at 200 °C, choice of module technology, a performance loss of less than 10% after
whereas the dashed line is obtained after curing 30 min at 180 °C. Data courtesy 25 years can be guaranteed (e.g. on Panasonic N330). Combined with
of Namics Corp.
the expected high energy yield and the quasi perfect bifaciality this
should lead to record high kWh production per rated WP in many en-
corresponding to > 23% for full six inch devices) [129]. Modules using vironments. Finally, IBC-SHJ devices could further extend the efficiency
standard M2 SHJ cells produced in the same pilot line, multi-wire in- and performance roadmap of SHJ, provided that the efficiency gain
terconnection and with regular cell spacing were certified at 335 W compensates for the increased process complexity. Both highest effi-
[129], a value well above today s standard PV module performance (cf. ciency [1,4] and lean processes have been reported [34] but not yet in
Fig. 12). The modules show a remarkable FF of 79.4%. SHJ modules are the same device.

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5. Summary trade-off between shading and resistive losses, and discuss FF gains that
can arise from cell-to-cell mismatch. Regarding industrialization, the
Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells are part of the family of solar homogeneity of the thin a-Si:H passivation layers as well as expensive
cells with passivating contacts; they feature high open-circuit voltages raw materials were often seen as hindrances for the success of SHJ.
(VOC ), generally well above 700 mV. Achieving of fill-factors (FF) With recent technological progress, these problems will likely be solved
comparable to the best high-efficiency devices based on homo-junctions in the future. The intrinsic bifacial nature of SHJ technology as well as
has long been a challenge for SHJ solar cells. In 2017, Kaneka Corp. its low temperature coefficient should lead to record high energy pro-
demonstrated a SHJ solar cell with interdigitated contacts at the rear duction per rated power in many climate regions.
side with a FF of 84.9%, the highest ever shown for a silicon solar cell so
far. With an efficiency of 26.7% this marked a new world record for Acknowledgements
silicon solar cells, and it underlines that SHJ technology not only en-
ables very high VOC , but also FF. In a simulation study we show the The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Qatar
impact of recombination in the absorber as well as at its surfaces on VOC Foundation for funding. Raphaël Monnard and Gabriel Christmann, for
and FF and emphasize that low recombination is especially important to support in developing the python script, Jacques Levrat for help with
reach high FF. We review briefly the different cell-to-module loss and the CTM simulations, and Peter Fiala for proofreading abstract and
gain mechanisms. For different interconnection schemes we discuss the summary.

Appendix A. Description of simulation approach

For the simulation of (temperature-dependent) JV characteristics a python script was developed to calculate:

1. injection-dependent effective minority carrier lifetime, considering Shockley-Read-Hall, Auger and radiative recombination in the silicon ab-
sorber as well as surface recombination;
2. the absorbed current density Jabs for the AM1.5 g (ASTM G-173-03) spectrum at a given temperature and optical properties;
3. the implied JV characteristic from the injection-dependent effective minority carrier lifetime, assuming Jabs as short circuit current density;
4. the JV characteristic assuming an ohmic series resistance by shifting the voltage according to the voltage drop over the resistance at the given
current density following Ohm's law.

A.1. Optical modeling

The calculation of the absorption A (λ ) is done using analytical modeling, following an approach initially suggested by Deckman et al. [130] and
extended by Boccard et al. [131]. The analytical model traces an average ray through the absorber and assumes a lambertian distribution of light. We
use Eq. (5) in ref. [131] to calculate the absorption in the wavelength-range from 300 nm to 1300 nm. We assume no reflection when entering the
absorber (R 0 = 0 ). For the simulations shown in Fig. 4, we vary the parasitic absorption at the rear side as a wavelength-independent parameter
( APback = 0, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5). The parasitic absorption at the front side ( APfront ) we calculate with single-pass Lambert-Beer absorption
4πkaSi
APfront = 1 − exp ⎛− ·taSi ⎞
⎝ λ ⎠ (A.1)
for a-Si:H(p) thicknesses taSi 0 nm, 2 nm, 5 nm, 10 nm, and with the extinction coefficient for a-Si:H(p) kaSi (λ ) published by Holman et al. [53] and
taken from the refractive index library on pvlighthouse.com. Further parameters of the optical models are: a0 = 2 , b1 = 1/ n2 (lambertian scattering),
and the temperature dependent absorption coefficient of silicon α (T ) , taken from ref. [132]. Using A (λ ) , the absorbed current density Jabs is then
calculated following
q 1300nm
Jabs =
hc
∫300nm A (λ )·λEAM1.5 (λ ) dλ
(A.2)
with the elementary charge q, the Planck constant h, and the speed of light c.

A.2. Charge carrier lifetime & implied JV curve modeling

bulk
Recombination in the silicon absorber is characterised by Shockley-Read-Hall lifetime τSRH [133], equation (5.3) and intrinsic lifetime τintr as
parametrized by Richter et al. [134], equation (18). For the temperature-dependent intrinsic carrier concentration n i (T ) the parametrization by
Misiakos et al. [135] is used.
The surface recombination rate Rsurf is modeled using the model for a-Si:H/c-Si interface recombination based on the amphoteric nature of

Table A1
Parameter used for the simulation if not stated otherwise.
Parameter Parameter
(bulk) Value (surface) Value

Wafer thickness w 160 μm Model Dangling-bond

Doping (n-type) 2 × 1015 cm−3 Qg 0 cm−2
σn 10−14 cm2 σn0 1
·10−16 cm2
20
-14 2
σp 10 cm σp0 10-16 cm2
bulk
Ntrap 109 cm−3 σn+ 500·σn0
Trap energy level midgap σp− 500·σp0

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J. Haschke et al. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 187 (2018) 140–153

silicon dangling bonds proposed by Olibet et al. [136]. The parameters used in the model are summarized in Table A1, the same surface re-
combination has been assumed for both sides of the absorber.
bulk
The injection-dependent effective lifetime τeff is then calculated with τSRH , τintr , and assuming symmetrical surface recombination [137] following
1 1 1 2Rsurf
= bulk + +
τeff τSRH τintr Δn w (A.3)
with the excess charge carrier density Δn and absorber thickness w. When the effective lifetime should be limited by surface recombination only, the
bulk defect density was set to 1 cm-3 to avoid division by zero.
The implied open-circuit voltage VOC (iVOC ) is dependent of Δn and is calculated using

kT ⎛ (n 0 + Δn)(p0 + Δp) ⎞
iVOC (Δn) = ln ⎜ ⎟
q ⎝ n i (T )2 ⎠ (A.4)
with the Boltzmann constant k, and the equilibrium concentrations of electrons (n 0 ) and holes ( p0 ), and Δn = Δp . The implied voltage range iVOC (Δn)
represents the voltage of the implied JV characteristic.
The recombination current Jrec (Δn) can be written as
Δn
Jrec (Δn) = q w
τeff (A.5)
which leads to the implied JV characteristic derived for a range of Δn . For the calculation of the illuminated implied JV characteristic, the Jabs as
obtained from equation (A.2) is assumed as JSC and subtracted from the right side of equation (A.5) which allows for the calculation of the implied
fill-factor iFF.

Appendix B. Comparison of cell-to-module losses of two multi-wire configurations: 200 μm and 300 μm

This simulation aims at illustrating the trade off between shading and ohmic losses that drives the choice of an interconnection scheme.
Because of their circular shape, the effective optical shading of wires once encapsulated in modules is about 60% of the wire diameter (ϕwires ).16
Then, the shading loss can be estimated using:
lengthcell
shading = Nwires·ϕwires ·0.6·
areacell (B.1)
with e.g. for 6 in. M2 wafers, lengthcell = 156.75 mm and areacell = 244.3 cm−2 .
The ohmic losses in the interconnection were calculated using an in-house simulation software. The parameters for the simulation were chosen to
be representative of a standard bifacial multi-wire SHJ configuration: wire resistivity (1.7 μΩ m), number of fingers at the front and the rear (87 and
207), and finger line resistance at the front and the rear (0.83 and 0.91 Ω cm−1).

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