Improvement of Commercial Silicon Solar Cells with N+-P-N+ Structure using Halogenic Oxide Passivation

This paper describes the effect of halogenic gettering during oxide passivation of commercial solar cell with the $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure. In order to study the effect of halogenic gettering on $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure mono-crystalline silicon solar cell, we performed conventional POCl$_3$ diffusion for emitter formation and oxide passivation in the presence of HCl vapors. The $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure based silicon solar cells were found to have higher short circuit current and minority carrier lifetime. Their performance was also found to be superior than the conventional $N^{+}$-P-$N^{+}$ structure based mono-crystalline silicon solar cell. The cell parameters of the $n^{+}$-p-$p^{+}$ and $n^{+}$-p-$n^{+}$ structure based cells, passivated by HCl assisted oxidation were measured. The improvement in $I_{sc}$ was attributed to the effect of the increased diffusion length of minority carriers, which came from the halogenic gettering effect during the growth of passivating oxide. The presence of chlorine caused gettering of the cells by removing the heavy metals, if any. The other advantage of the presence of chlorine was the removal of the diffusion induced (in oxygen environment) stacking faults and line defects from the surfaces of the silicon wafers. All these effects caused the improvement of the minority carrier lifetime, which in-turn helped to improve the quality of the solar cells.