Surface Passivation of Atmospheric Pressure Dry Etched Multicrystalline Silicon Surfaces

In this work, we investigate the electrical performance of multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) solar cell precursors in terms of minority charge carrier lifetime and implied open-circuit voltage as a function of the different surface passivation layers applied. Here, we applied a plasma-less nanotexturing process by atmospheric pressure dry etching (ADE) that enables low reflectivity, followed by a short anisotropic alkaline etch. It is seen that surface reflection and carrier lifetime both exhibit dependency on surface morphology of nanostructures and such dependency can be affected by variations adapted in surface passivation. It is also seen in our investigation that on the front surface additional surface passivation layer applied by fast atomic layer deposition (ALD) of Al2O3 followed by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) of SiNx as standard anti-reflection coating (ARC) shows relatively higher implied open-circuit voltage than implied open-circuit voltage gained by standard ARC layer of PECVD-SiNx.