Asymmetric TMO–Metal–TMO Structure for Enhanced Efficiency and Long-Term Stability of Si-Based Heterojunction Solar Cells

• Published in: Materials Vol. 16; no. 16; p. 5550
• Main Authors: Jung, Yoon-Chae, Yu, Young-Jin, Kim, Yu-Kyung, Lee, Jin Hee, Seo, Jung Hwa, Choi, Jea-Young
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.08.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: asymmetric; Asymmetry; Carrier lifetime; Crystal defects; Efficiency; Energy conversion efficiency; heterojunction solar cell; Heterojunctions; Lattice vacancies; long-term stability; Metal oxides; Minority carriers; Molybdenum; Molybdenum trioxide; Oxygen; passivation; Passivity; Photoelectrons; Photovoltaic cells; Silicon; Solar cells; Stability analysis; Surface defects; Temperature; Thickness; Thin films; transition metal oxide; Vanadium pentoxide; X ray photoelectron spectroscopy; South Korea; United States > US
• ISSN: 1996-1944; 1996-1944
• DOI: 10.3390/ma16165550

In this study, we fabricated Si-based heterojunction solar cells (HSCs) with an asymmetric TMO–metal–TMO (TMT) structure using both MoO3 and V2O5 as the hole-selective contacts. Our HSCs offer enhanced long-term stability and effective passivation for crystal defects on the Si sur-face. We analyzed the oxygen vacancy state and surface morphology of the MoO3- and V2O5-TMO thin films using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy to investigate their passivation characteristics for Si surface defects. From the measured minority carrier lifetime, V2O5 revealed a highly improved lifetime (590 μs) compared to that of MoO3 (122.3 μs). In addition, we evaluated the long-term stability of each TMO thin film to improve the operation stability of the HSCs. We deposited different types of TMOs as the top- and bottom-TMO layers and assessed the effect of the thickness of each TMO layer. The fabricated asymmetric TMT/Si HSCs showed noticeable improvements in efficiency (7.57%) compared to 6.29% for the conventional symmetric structure which used the same TMO material for both the top and bottom layers. Furthermore, in terms of long-term stability, the asymmetric TMT/Si HSCs demonstrated an efficiency that was 250% higher than that of symmetric TMT/Si HSCs, as determined via power conversion efficiency degradation over 2000 h which is mainly attributed by the lower oxygen vacancy of the top-TMO, V2O5. These results suggest that the asymmetric TMT structure is a promising approach for the fabrication of low-cost and high-efficiency Si-based HSCs with enhanced long-term stability.