High efficiency screen-printed n-type silicon solar cell using co-diffusion of APCVD boron emitter and POCl3 back surface field

We present the fabrication and analysis of Passivated Emitter and Rear Totally Diffused (PERT) solar cells on n-type silicon using a co-diffusion process. In a single high temperature step, a BSG/SiOx stack deposited by APCVD and a POCl3 back surface field diffuse into the wafer to form the boron doped emitter and phosphorus doped back surface field. The SiOx layer on top of BSG acts as a masking layer to prevent cross-doping of phosphorus as well as a blocking layer for boron out-diffusion. This resulted in an initial sheet resistance of 76 Ω/□ with good uniformity and a final p+ emitter sheet resistance of 97 Ω/□ after boron rich layer removal. Additionally, bulk lifetime was investigated before and after the high temperature step that resulted in an increase from 1.2 ms to 1.5 ms due to a POCl3 gettering effect. A peak cell efficiency of 20.3% was achieved and each recombination component in terms of saturation current density was calculated and analyzed to understand the cell for further efficiency enhancement.