Improvement in performance of hydrogenated amorphous silicon solar cells with hydrogenated intrinsic amorphous silicon oxide p/i buffer layers

•Distinct types of p/i buffer layers were firstly introduced in a-Si:H solar cells.•Origin of performance improvement with i-a-SiOx:H p/i buffer layer is studied.•Band gap and activation energy have been intensively examined.•Initial conversion efficiencies of a-Si:H solar cells reach 10.64%.

In the study, we inserted different types of intrinsic and p-type layers as the p/i buffer layer in hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) solar cells and investigated their effects on device performance. The band gap and activation energy of the buffer layer had a significant effect on the open-circuit voltage (Voc) of the cells. Inserting a hydrogenated intrinsic amorphous silicon oxide (i-a-SiOx:H) layer as the p/i buffer layer in a-Si:H solar cells leads to a significant Voc increase up to 909 mV. It also increased the external quantum efficiency at 400 nm to 75%. This was primarily owing to the increase in the built-in electric field and a decrease in the rate of carrier recombination at the p/i interface. Finally, the initial conversion efficiencies of single-junction a-Si:H solar cell and hydrogenated amorphous silicon/hydrogenated microcrystalline silicon (a-Si:H/μc-Si:H) tandem solar cell could be increased to 10.64% and 12.24%, respectively.