Effect of rapid thermal oxidation on structure and photoelectronic properties of silicon oxide in monocrystalline silicon solar cells

• In this work, RTO on the monocrystalline silicon substrate was used.
• Inline walking string high-quality batch type quartz-tube furnace systems are used.
• The temperature and the growth time of RTO were 810 °C and five minutes.
• The carrier lifetime was increased 19.49 μs, and the average reflectance was 0.87%.
• The IQE was increased 8%, and exhibiting an absolute efficiency gain of 0.23%.

This paper concerns the topic of surface passivation properties of rapid thermal oxidation on p-type monocrystalline silicon wafer for use in screen-printed silicon solar cells. It shows that inline thermal oxidation is a very promising alternative to the use of conventional batch type quartz tube furnaces for the surface passivation of industrial phosphorus-diffused emitters. Five minutes was the most favorable holding time for the rapid thermal oxidation growth of the solar cell sample, in which the average carrier lifetime was increased 19.4 μs. The Fourier transform infrared spectrum of the rapid thermal oxidation sample, whose structure was Al/Al-BSF/p-type Si/n-type SiP/SiO2/SiNx/Ag solar cell with an active area of 15.6 cm2, contained an absorption peak at 1085 cm−1, which was associated with the Si–O bonds in silicon oxide. The lowest average reflectance of this sample is 0.87%. Furthermore, for this sample, its average of internal quantum efficiency and conversion efficiency are respectively increased by 8% and 0.23%, compared with the sample without rapid thermal oxidation processing.

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