Influence of pin Amorphous Silicon Stack Deposition Sequence on Solar Cell Performance and Degradation Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2017 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved. The performance and stress-induced degradation of a-Si:H solar cells with pin and nip stacked structures prepared in one pump down within the same chamber have been studied. The performance of the pin cell is better than that of the nip cell due to the dopant contamination of the i-layer from the previous deposition step, i.e., actually formed in the p+p-n+ and n+n-p+, separately. Deterioration of the cell under the electric-stress condition is accelerated with the simultaneous solar light illumination due to the enhanced generation of defects. The degradation of the p+p-n+ cell is much larger than that of the n+n-p+ cell due to the stronger recombination of charge carriers in the p- layer. The former is more difficult to restore to its initial stage than the latter using a thermal annealing step because of the difficult reactivation of the boron dopant. In summary, the a-Si:H tri-layer deposition sequence affects the i-layer properties, which is critical to the solar cell performance and reliability.

published proceedings

  • ECS JOURNAL OF SOLID STATE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

author list (cited authors)

  • Kim, K., & Kuo, Y.

citation count

  • 5

complete list of authors

  • Kim, Kibum||Kuo, Yue

publication date

  • January 2017