Accelerating Industrial Solar Cells

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Approximately 80% of the current silicon photovoltaics production capacity is dominated by low performance cell designs whose power conversion efficiency is limited to ~20%.These low efficiency cell designs are often limited in performance by recombination of charge carriers at their metallic contacts. Recently, a number of transition metal oxides (TMOs), when deposited between the silicon absorber and the metallic contacts, have been shown to be able to simultaneously suppress energy losses from carrier recombination and also allow transportation of current – so called ‘passivated contacts’. Whilst very promising with regards to device efficiency, investigations into TMO passivated contacts have been limited to small devices using deposition techniques that are impractical for industrial applications and present uncertainties with regards to their through-put, cost of ownership, maintenance downtimes, and running costs.How the project worksThis project seeks to raise cell efficiencies by capitalising on these recent developments in contact formation, but using common industrial techniques that can be easily integrated into existing manufacturing capacity. We aim to do this via the plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) of the TMOs; this has never been done before. Doing so will increase cell efficiencies in production and lowering the cost of photovoltaics-generated electricity.

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