High sheet resistance emitter c-Si solar cells with low SRV by local line contact with transparent conducting oxides

•High sheet resistance (Rs) solar cells suffer from low open circuit voltage (Voc).•ITO local line contact with SiO2 passivation is used to reduce the recombination loss.•Improvement in carrier lifetime, Voc, reveals the melioration in passivation.•ITO full and local line contact solar cell results in 16.26% and 17.15% of efficiency respectively.

The high sheet resistance (Rs) solar cells with ITO full contact suffer from low open circuit voltage (Voc) with a negligible/no passivation effect. To overcome this, we approached ITO local line contact with SiO2 passivation to reduce the recombination loss. Passivation area increases to 91.29%. The improvement in carrier lifetime, Voc, reveals the melioration in passivation. With high Rs emitter, the ITO full contact solar cell results in efficiency of 16.26% whereas the ITO local line contact solar cell results in 17.15%.