Towards wafer quality crystalline silicon thin-film solar cells on glass

•We present thin-film silicon solar cells directly grown on glass.•The crystalline silicon absorber is formed using the liquid phase crystallization approach.•High open circuit voltages up to 656 mV have been reached.•Electron hall mobilities similar to multicrystalline wafer material were obtained.•Numerical device modeling reveals high quality absorber material and interfaces.

In this paper we present our latest progress in fabricating high quality crystalline silicon thin film solar cells on glass. Large silicon grains are directly formed via electron-beam induced liquid phase crystallization (LPC) from a nanocrystalline precursor film. The LPC process is carried out on an amorphous SiO2 layer, and both a high quality self-passivating interface and excellent electronic bulk properties are obtained. Solar cells with stable efficiencies of 11.5% and open-circuit voltages well above 600 mV with a maximum value of 656 mV are presented. So far, such high VOC values have only been achieved on wafer-based silicon solar cells.

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