Activating and optimizing evaporation-processed magnesium oxide passivating contact for silicon solar cells

Abstract

Irrespective of the success on reduction of contact resistivity, lack of chemical passivation of evaporated metal oxides heavily hinders their applications as passivating contacts, such contacts can be an alternative route for high efficiency and cost effective silicon solar cells. Here, we demonstrate that electron beam evaporated magnesium oxide (MgOx)thin film can work as a promising electron-selective passivating contact for n-Si solar cells after a post-annealing treatment and an alumina-initiated atomic hydrogenation. 10 nm MgOx on n-Si provided a surface recombination velocity down to 14.9 cm/s while 1 nm MgOx showed a low contact resistivity of 14 mΩ cm2. Comprehensive characterizati..