This application claims the priority benefit of Taiwan application serial no. 102105163, filed on Feb. 8, 2013. The entirety of the above-mentioned patent application is hereby incorporated by reference herein and made a part of this specification.
The disclosure relates to a silicon solar cell structure.
In recent years, the global climate and temperature become anomalistic due to environmental pollution. Therefore, demands on sustainable and clean energies rapidly draw much attention from countries around the world. The solar energy is no doubt the major supply among carbon-free energies, and a solar cell is a type of photoelectric conversion device capable of directly converting the solar energy into electricity. According to a report from EPIA about market shares of the global solar cells, crystalline silicon solar cells take the greatest share.
A conventional manufacturing method of a silicon solar cell at least includes texturizing a monocrystalline silicon wafer, cleaning the surface of the wafer, performing a phosphorous diffusion process, depositing a P2O5 layer on the surface of the wafer to form a phosphorous-containing oxide layer (which includes the P2O5 layer and a SiO2:P layer), etching a rear surface, removing the phosphorous-containing oxide layer since the P2O5 layer therein is conventionally regarded as recombination centers, which causes a great damage to surface passivation of the wafer. Thus, the phosphorous-containing oxide layer is removed generally by using a liquid contain hydrogen fluoride. Afterwards, a PECVD SiNx anti-reflection film is coated, an electrode manufacturing process is performed. These manufacturing processes have been the standard procedures of current cell manufacturers and hard to be replaced. However, if the manufacturing processes may be simplified without affecting the cell efficiency, it will be a great progress of the crystalline silicon solar cell.
One of exemplary embodiments comprises a silicon solar cell structure. The silicon solar cell structure includes a silicon substrate, a phosphorus diffusion doping layer within a surface of the silicon substrate, a passivation layer on the surface of the silicon substrate, a phosphorous-containing oxide layer between the passivation layer and the phosphorus diffusion doping layer within the silicon substrate, and an electrode on the surface of the silicon substrate and passing through the passivation layer and the phosphorous-containing oxide layer, such that the electrode contacts with the phosphorus diffusion doping layer within the silicon substrate.
Another exemplary embodiment comprises a silicon solar cell structure. The silicon solar cell structure includes a silicon substrate, an anti-reflection layer on a front surface of the silicon substrate, a phosphorous-containing oxide layer between the anti-reflection layer and the front surface of the silicon substrate, a first contact and a second contact. The silicon substrate has a front-side field (FSF) layer in the front surface, and the silicon substrate has a back-side field (BSF) and an emitter layer separately in a rear surface of the silicon substrate. The first contact is on the rear surface of the silicon substrate and contacts the emitter layer, and the second contact is on the rear surface of the silicon substrate and contacts the BSF layer.
Several exemplary embodiments accompanied with figures are described in detail below to further describe the disclosure in details.
The accompanying drawings are included to provide further understanding, and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification. The drawings illustrate exemplary embodiments and, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the disclosure.
The following description is supplemented by accompanying drawings to be illustrated more fully. However, the disclosure may be implemented in multiple different manners and is not limited to the embodiments described herein. For the sake for clarity, sizes and relative sizes of each layer and each region shown in the drawings may be exaggerated.
Hereinafter, when an element or layer is referred to as being “located on” another element or layer, it can be directly located on the other element or layer. That is, for example, intervening elements or layers may be present. Moreover, when an element is referred to as “contacting” another element or layer, there are no intervening elements or layers present therebetween. Other words for describing space relations, such as “below”, “above” or the like are used to describe the relationship between an element or layer and another element or layer. Such spatially relative terms are used to describe a relationship between an element or layer and another element or layer illustrated in the drawings. It will be understood that the spatially relative terms are intended to encompass different orientations of the elements in use and/or operation in addition to the orientation depicted in the drawings. For example, if the device in the drawings is turned over, elements described as “on” and/or “above” other elements or layers would then be oriented “below” and/or “beneath” the other elements or layers.
With reference to
The phosphorous-containing oxide layer 204 is formed by a conventional high-temperature phosphorous diffusion process and may include a P2O5 layer 208 contacting with the passivation layer 202 and a SiO2:P layer 210 contacting with the surface 200a of the silicon substrate 200. Referring to
In conventional solar cell manufacturing process, the phosphorus diffusion doping layer 206 depicted in
In addition, if the silicon substrate 200 is a N-type silicon substrate, the surface 200a of the silicon substrate 200 may be a rear surface of the silicon solar cell structure 10. When the phosphorous-containing oxide layer 204 is disposed on the rear surface of the silicon solar cell structure 10, it may also provide passivation of the rear surface of the silicon solar cell structure 10, whereby reducing the junction resistance between an electrode (not shown) and the silicon substrate 200 after high-temperature firing process to improve cell efficiency.
With reference to
Since the phosphorous-containing oxide layer 304 is disposed on the front surface 300a of the silicon substrate 300, taking into consideration the optical performance, a total thickness of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer 304 and the anti-reflection layer 302 is, for example, between 50 nm and 200 nm, and a thickness of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer 304 is between 5 nm and 40 nm. Moreover, in the present embodiment, the front surface 300a of the silicon substrate 300 is a textured surface, and thus the light reflection may be reduced. Further, the silicon solar cell structure 30 may also include a back electrode 310 on the rear surface 300b of the silicon substrate 300. Meanwhile, a p+ region 312 serving as a back-side field (BSF) layer may be disposed on the rear surface 300b of the silicon substrate 300.
Besides, when the front electrode 306 of the silicon solar cell structure 30 is formed by silver paste or electroplating, the phosphorous in the phosphorous-containing oxide layer 304 is melted at high temperature and doped into the silicon substrate 300, such that a heavily doped region 314 is formed beneath the front electrode 306, which facilitates in reducing a junction resistance value of a metal-semiconductor junction so as to improve conversion efficiency. To be specific, when the front electrode 306 is formed by silver paste, since the silver paste contains glass, the anti-reflection layer 302 may be partly etched by the glass at high temperature up to 800-900° C., and the phosphorous in the phosphorous-containing oxide layer 304 is melted to form a n-type heavily doped region 314 at the metal-semiconductor junction (in the silicon substrate 300), and thus the junction resistance is reduced. Likewise, in the step of forming the front electrode 306 by electroplating, if the anti-reflection layer 302 is removed by laser in advance, the phosphorous-containing oxide layer 304 is also removed and re-melted due to the high energy laser. Thereby, the heavily doped region 314 may also be formed in the silicon substrate 300. Thereafter, the front electrode 306 is formed on the region processed by the laser through the electroplating process or the like.
With reference to
With reference to
The phosphorous-containing oxide layer 504 of the fourth embodiment includes, for example, a P2O5 layer contacting with the anti-reflection layer 502 and a SiO2:P contacting with the front surface 500a of the silicon substrate 500, which is similar to
A plurality of experiments is illustrated hereinafter to describe the disclosure in detail.
Experiment 1: relation of a phosphorous-containing oxide layer and a SiNx thin film.
In conventional silicon solar cell structure, a silicon nitride (SiNx:H) thin film having a thickness of 600 nm and a refraction index within a range of 2-2.1 is usually used as a passivation layer because the range of the refraction index is good for passivation. Generally, an anti-reflection layer with the optimal optical performance should have a refraction index around 1.9, but it is low on hydrogen content, which results in bad passivation effect. Accordingly, in the conventional process, the refraction index is gradually increased up to 2-2.1 to increase the hydrogen content of the SiNx:H thin film. As such, a few optical properties are sacrificed to exchange for the passivation effect so as to obtain better efficiency.
However, in Experiment 1, the optical property between the phosphorous-containing oxide layer and the silicon substrate is considered to reduce an optical reflection effect of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer and the silicon substrate and get better photocurrents so as to improve the cell efficiency. The influence of different SiNx:H thin films obtained from an optical simulation and different thickness of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer on the photocurrents is illustrated in
In
Referring to
According to
Experiment 2: the passivation property of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer.
When the conditions for the phosphorous diffusion are adjusted, it is found that during diffusion, the passivation property is significantly improved with the thickness decrease of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer and the increase of oxygen flow rate. That is, if a SiO2:P layer with few nanometers is formed on a junction between the phosphorous-containing oxide layer and the silicon, the passivation property will be improved.
Accordingly, in this case, silicon solar cell structures illustrated in
Furthermore, it is expected that by adjusting the temperature for the diffusion process, the thickness of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer may become thicker, and then a high-quality oxide layer is formed. In
When comparing the conversion efficiencies of solar cells with and without the phosphorous-containing oxide layer, a resistance value of an emitter for the phosphorous diffusion is set at 100 ohm/□, the front surface and the back electrode structures are manufactured by a screen printing process with a high-temperature firing process. The experimental group keeps the P2O5 layer structure without removing the phosphorous-containing oxide layer, while the control group utilizes the conventional process with removing the phosphorous-containing oxide layer. Results of the two groups are shown in Table 1 as follows.
With reference to Table 1, comparing the experimental group with the control group, when the samples have the same short-circuit current (ISC), the open-circuit voltages (VOC) of the sample with P2O5 are relatively higher than that without P2O5. That is to say, the phosphorous-containing oxide layer causes no negative influence on the samples. Meanwhile, it is found from Table 1 that among the samples having a high emitter resistance value (100Ω/□), the resistance of the metal-semiconductor junction of the sample with P2O5 is obviously lowered down, such that the fill factor (F.F.) has a higher value. Accordingly, when a sample having a higher emitter resistance value is used for comparison, it can be seen that the sample having the phosphorous-containing oxide layer achieves outstanding property, of which results are shown in Table 2 as follows.
With reference to the results shown in Table 2, if the phosphorous-containing oxide layer is removed from the sample having a high emitter resistance value (131Ω/□), the sample will have a greater junction resistance after high-temperature firing, such that the F.F. is drop down to only 22. In contrast, in the sample with P2O5, the F.F. is about 64. That is to say, the phosphorous-containing oxide layer facilitates in reducing the junction resistance after the firing process to improve the cell efficiency. According to the results from the two experiments (as shown in Table 1 and Table 2), it is highly proved that the existence of the phosphorous-containing oxide not only simplifies the process steps and reduces the production cost, but further improves the conversion efficiency of the solar cell.
Experiment 3: the phosphorous-containing oxide layer is applied in an experiment of an electroplating electrode.
When manufacturing the electroplating electrode, a laser drilling process is applied on a sample having a manufactured P-N junction and an anti-reflection layer to manufacture a fine-linewidth electroplating electrode. Thus, after the phosphorous diffusion process, the silicon nitride anti-reflection layer is plated. Then, two experimental groups are compared. One of the groups is a sample having the phosphorous-containing oxide layer structure, while the other is a sample with the phosphorous-containing oxide layer structure removed. The places cut open by the laser are then measured after the laser drilling process, and a sheet resistance of the sample with P2O5 is 47Ω/□, and a sheet resistance of the sample without P2O5 is 117Ω/□. Namely, the existence of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer, after the laser drilling process, makes it being re-melted with the emitter semiconductor layer due to high-temperature laser, which results in a heavily doped region. Accordingly, according to the experimental measurement, it is found that the sheet resistance has a downward trend, such that a specific selective emitter structure. Due to heavy doping, the junction resistance of the metal-semiconductor junction may be reduced, and thus the experimental on the electroplating electrode is further performed, of which results are shown in Table 3 as follows.
To compare the conversion efficiencies of the solar cell with and without the phosphorous-containing oxide layer, the resistance value of the emitter formed by the phosphorous diffusion is set as 100 ohm/□, the back electrode structures are manufactured by the screen printing process with high-temperature firing process, and the front electrode structures are manufactured by laser scribing process and then electroplating a nickel-copper. In the experimental group, the phosphorous-containing oxide layer is not removed, and the P2O5 structure is retained. The control group applies the conventional process, where the phosphorous-containing oxide layer is removed. According to the results shown in Table 3, in the sample having the phosphorous-containing oxide layer, the short-circuit current and the open-circuit voltage are slightly greater than those in the sample with the phosphorous-containing oxide layer removed. However, the F.F. in the experimental group is unexpectedly increased. It is proved that the phosphorous-containing oxide layer may facilitate in reducing the junction resistance after the laser drilling and the electroplating processes so as to improve the cell efficiency.
Based on the above, in the silicon solar cell having the phosphorous-containing oxide layer structure introduced by the disclosure, the cell efficiency is not reduced but even increased and the production cost is reduced. According the aforementioned experiments, some facts are proved. First, in the samples having the phosphorous-containing oxide layer, the manufacturing process of the anti-reflection layer performed with the adaptive anti-reflection conditions does not result in reduction of the photocurrents. Moreover, the photocurrents may be increases by using the silicon nitride layer having a low refraction index. Second, it is also proved that the phosphorous-containing oxide layer does not lead to the reduction of the passivation property, and according to the experiments, the passivation effect of the phosphorous-containing oxide layer is even better than silicon nitride. Therein, in conventional silicon solar cell manufactured by screen printing and firing the electrode, if the phosphorous-containing oxide layer is not removed, the junction resistance between the metal electrode and the silicon may be effectively reduced so as to enhance the cell efficiency. Lastly, as for the silicon solar cell manufactured by laser drilling and electrode-plating, it is proved that after laser drilling, the selective emitter structure may formed on the cell having the phosphorous-containing oxide layer to reduce the junction resistance of the electroplating electrode and the semiconductor junction so as to improve the cell efficiency. The silicon solar cell structure with the phosphorous-containing oxide layer according to the disclosure has high passivation property, and it can be applied on the IBC solar cells in the future. The structure introduced by the disclosure may even actually and easily applied into the current mass production and has been proved to indeed facilitate in improving the cell efficiency according to the experiments.
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that various modifications and variations can be made to the structure of the disclosed embodiments without departing from the scope or spirit of the disclosure. In view of the foregoing, it is intended that the disclosure cover modifications and variations of this disclosure provided they fall within the scope of the following claims and their equivalents.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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102105163 | Feb 2013 | TW | national |