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2015
Conference Paper
Titel
Sputter damage to amorphous silicon layers for heterojunction solar cells
Abstract
High-efficiency silicon solar cells, like the silicon heterojunction cell with thin intrinsic layers (HIT) [1, 2], use transparent conductive oxides (TCO) as anti-reflection layers. The production of these layers using sputtering technology can cause damage to the underlying layers. This damage can be seen in a degradation of the surface passivation properties. With the help of various protections against different damage causes we analyzed the origin of the sputter damage. We also investigated the different degradation behavior of single layer intrinsic amorphous silicon layers ((i) a-Si) and p/n-doped silicon layers on top of intrinsic amorphous silicon layers as stacks. The influence of the intrinsic passivation layer thickness on the amount of degradation was also investigated. The results show that a doped layer can protect the intrinsic layer from sputter damage. The damage itself is caused by plasma photons in the range of 2.5 to 4.15 eV.