Development of Novel Hydrogen Trapping Techniques

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UNSW Sydney has received a funding grant from ARENA to develop new recently patented techniques for trapping and controlling hydrogen within highly defective silicon to enable higher solar cell efficiencies while using cheaper silicon wafer sources.Defects in silicon solar cells harm the efficiency but can be passivated (deactivated or healed) by hydrogen. This Development of Novel Hydrogen Trapping Techniques project will investigate the defects present in two heavily defected cheap sources of silicon wafer that cannot be passivated by existing hydrogenation processes. Techniques will be developed to use the defects themselves to get more hydrogen into the cell, control the hydrogen to trap it within the defects and subsequently passivate the defects.Key resultsThe project aimed to improve the understanding of defects in quasi-mono silicon (QM-Si) also known as cast-mono silicon, and small-grain mc-Si wafers in order to develop and optimise the new patented hydrogen trapping processes. As a result, the project has been able to significantly improve the electrical quality of these wafers / improve materials and effectively mitigate light-induced defects resulting in stable cell efficiencies.

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