Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 106 (2012) 11–16

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Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells

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Improving the a-Si:H(p) rear emitter contact of n-type silicon solar cells
Martin Bivour n, Christian Reichel, Martin Hermle, Stefan W. Glunz
Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), Heidenhofstr. 2, 79110 Freiburg, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Available online 13 July 2012 In this paper we address the fundamental challenge of forming an efficient contact between the p-type
Keywords: a-Si:H layer and n-type TCO’s as contact layers in amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction (SHJ)
Silicon heterojunction solar cells. We point out the capability of Suns-Voc measurements to give valuable insights into the
TCO formation of Schottky barriers and its influence on the solar cell fill factor FF. The influence of the
Schottky contact a-Si:H(p) doping on the Schottky characteristic is shown for test structures and on device level. Test
structures are used to probe the influence of various contact layers on the effective work function at the
a-Si:H/contact layer interface. A very good correlation between the vacuum work function of different
contact layers and the open-circuit voltage is observed for test structures. Therefore, we could
demonstrate the work function mismatch between a-Si:H and ITO and a-Si:H and various metals as
contact layers. For small area n-type silicon solar cells featuring an a-Si:H(p) rear emitter and a diffused
front surface field (FSF), it is shown that by improving the carrier transport between the a-Si:H(p) and
the contacting layer, ITO(n) or metal, FF above 80% can be obtained. Furthermore, we demonstrate that
a TCO is not mandatory for the rear SHJ emitter, which simplifies the cell structure and allows for
proper junction engineering. We obtained high internal rear side reflection with a single metal layer
and an efficiency of 22.8% for these TCO-less SHJ emitter solar cells. As these solar cells feature FF of up
to 81.5%, they clearly demonstrate the high FF potential of the silicon heterojunction which can be
achieved by proper junction engineering.
& 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Schottky barrier. To account for the Schottky barrier, a higher

Amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction SHJ solar cells
featuring an n-type crystalline c-Si(n) wafer and intrinsic and
doped hydrogenated amorphous silicon a-Si:H thin films as the
heterojunction emitter and back surface field (BSF) are known to
yield high efficiencies owing to remarkably low junction recombi-
nation [1,2,3]. As the design of the p-type SHJ emitter at the
illuminated front is strongly dictated by the parasitic absorption in
the SHJ layers, a-Si:H and transparent conductive oxide TCO,
optimization of the front layer stack is tricky as it comes at the
cost of open-circuit voltage Voc and fill factor FF [4], respectively.
Furthermore, the device performance is strongly related to the
doping of the a-Si:H layers. Sufficient doping and layer thickness
[5] has to be chosen to introduce the band bending at the a-Si:H/c-
Si interface determining the built-in voltage [6] and therefore the
upper limit of Voc. However, as the junction recombination can
increase with high doping [7], Voc is lowered for doping concentra-
tion above a certain level. A fundamental problem when contacting
the p-type a-Si:H with the n-type TCO’s is the formation of a
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ49 761 4588 5586; fax: þ 49 761 4588 9250.
E-mail address: martin.bivour@ise.fraunhofer.de (M. Bivour).
a-Si:H doping and/or layer thickness are required which can lead to
a trade-off between Voc and FF and Jsc and FF, respectively [8,4]. To
overcome these limitations we chose a solar cell design character-
ized by a SHJ (emitter) only at the rear and a diffused front surface
field (FSF) featuring negligible parasitic absorption at the front
[9–11]. This solar cell design is hereafter referred as a hybride SHJ
solar cell. This device structure [10] is featuring a well-known and
robust front and allows an increased degree of freedom for the
design of the SHJ since parasitic absorption in the a-Si:H layer stack
is not an issue. Therefore, junction optimization can be focused on
carrier recombination and/or carrier transport. A wide range of
contact layers can be used and a highly conductive TCO as a
contact layer, indispensable for its lateral conductivity at the front
of SHJ solar cells, is not mandatory for the rear SHJ. Therefore,
adapting the properties of the interface or contact layer to an
optimum doped a-Si:H layer is clearly simplified [12,13,9]. Never-
theless, thinking in terms of Jsc, omitting the TCO at the rear, which
is primarily acting as an optical layer by lowering the parasitic
absorption in the rear metal, limits the choice of the rear metal to a
few candidates to keep the optical losses to a minimum.
In this work we focus on the electrical and optical optimization
of the a-Si:H(p) rear emitter contact, in particularly with regard to
the improvement of FF.

0927-0248/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.solmat.2012.06.036
12 M. Bivour et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 106 (2012) 11–16
2. a-si:H(p)/ITO(n) Schottky contact
2.1. Theoretical considerations
It is known that the a-Si:H(p)/TCO(n) contact characteristic
can have a negative influence on the efficiency of silicon thin film
solar cells [14] and SHJ solar cells [15,9]. This is mainly attributed
to the a-Si:H(p)/TCO(n) tunnel junction [16], the work function
mismatch between both layers [17], the low doping efficiency
[18] and thus conductivity of the a-Si:H(p), and the low thickness
of the a-Si:H(p) layer [5,4,17]. The Schottky-like behavior of this
contact is therefore governed by the band alignment at the
interface (Fig. 1) and by the doping of the a-Si:H and TCO layer.
In Fig. 2 we qualitatively show the simulated influence of
the a-Si:H(p) doping and the work function mismatch between
a-Si:H(p) and the contact layer on FF. Three different doping
Fig. 1. Sketch of the TCO(n)/a-Si:H(p)/a-Si:H(i)/c-Si(n) band structure indicating
the transport barrier at the TCO(n)/a-Si:H(p) contact by the local inversion in the
a-Si:H(p). The tunneling transport required between p-type a Si:H and n-type ITO
is indicated by the arrow.
Fig. 2. Simulated FF vs. work function WF mismatch between the a-Si:H(p) and its
contact layer for three different a-Si:H(p) doping concentrations. High, moderate
and low doping are referred to an activation energy DEf,p of 0.2 eV, 0.3 eV and
0.4 eV, respectively. It has to be mentioned that in these simulations the contact
layer is characterized only by its work function and is not treated as an individual
semiconductor layer. Therefore, the structure rather corresponds to a metal/a-
Si:H(p)/c-Si(n) than to the experimentally investigated TCO(n)/aSi:H(p)/c-
Si(n) structure. Furthermore, it has to be pointed out that tunneling transport is
not implemented in the used program (AFORS-HET [20]).
concentrations of the a-Si:H(p) have been assumed and the work
function of the contact layer in respect to the work function/Fermi
level of the a-Si:H(p) emitter was varied. As common TCO’s
feature a work function well below that of the doped a-Si:H layer
[19], contact formation between these layers will result in a
depletion/inversion of a-Si:H layer (Fig. 1). This affects the hole
collection and the FF of the device negatively. For the case of very
low a-Si:H doping and a low work function at the interface (high
mismatch), not only the interface but also the whole a-Si:H layer
can be driven into depletion/inversion. In this case the overall
a-Si:H(p)/TCO(n) contact properties are dominated by the work
function at the interface and this is critical especially for very thin
layers [5,17]. In case of depletion this will additionally lower the
Voc of the device as the band bending of the a-Si(p)/c-Si(n) pn-
junction and therefore the built-in voltage is reduced. For the flat-
band conditions the junction properties are not affected by the
work function at the interface as the work function of the doped
layer and of the contact layer are matching. Accumulation of the
p-type layer is observed for a contact layer featuring a work
function higher than that of the doped a-Si:H(p) layer. Accumula-
tion can be interpreted as an ‘‘increased’’ a-Si:H(p) doping,
affecting the overall junction properties in a positive manner.
The trends from Fig. 2 are in agreement with experimentally
results where it is shown that engineering the effective interface
work function, that means decreasing the work function mis-
match and increasing the a-Si:H(p) doping results in improved
contact properties [12,15].
2.2. Experimental
In [21] it is shown that illumination-dependent Voc measure-
ments, performed at high illumination intensities, with the Suns-Voc
setup [22] are valuable to identify the influence of Schottky barriers
on the performance of silicon solar cells featuring a diffused
junction. In Fig. 3 we have sketched the equivalent circuit of the
p-type SHJ emitter featuring an n-type ITO as contact layer. By
modeling the junction properties [21] and comparing these to the
measured data in Fig. 3 it can be explained that the Schottky
contact generates a voltage opposite the pn-junction voltage which
can lead to a reversal of the Suns-Voc curve observed for high
illumination densities. As shown in Fig. 3, we could successfully
extend this method to the SHJ as indicated by the good fit between
the measured and modeled [21] characteristics. Here, the measured
Suns-Voc characteristic for a lowly doped a-Si:H(p) emitter in
contact to an ITO(n) is shown. It can be seen that the modeled
characteristics of the c-Si(n)/a-Si:H(i)/a-Si:H(p) pn-junction is dom-
inating the junction characteristics for illumination intensities of up
to 3 suns. This means that Voc at 1 sun for this solar cell precursor is
not affected by the a-Si:H(p)/ITO(n) Schottky diode. Nevertheless,
for illumination intensities above 10 suns the Schottky diode
dominates the overall characteristics of the junction, leading to a
decrease of Voc with increasing illumination intensity.
In Fig. 4 it is shown that the reversal point ‘‘n0’’ [21] of the
Suns-Voc curve can be used to obtain quantitative information
about the influence of the Schottky diode on the overall junction
properties. Here, the p-emitter doping of the 10nm thick amor-
phous layers was varied from very low to very high doping. The
a-Si:H deposition was performed in an parallel-plate PECVD
reactor powered at 13.56 MHz, at 200 1C, 500 mTorr using mix-
tures of silane (SiH4), hydrogen (H2), phosphine (PH3) and
diborane (B2H6). The H2/SiH4 ratio was fixed to 11 for all
depositions. It can be seen that for higher doping a shift of ‘‘n0’’
to higher illumination densities is observed. This indicates the
lowering of the Schottky barrier when a higher doping is applied.
From these measurements it can be concluded that a a-Si:H
doping above 2000 ppm is mandatory for our layers in order to
 M. Bivour et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 106 (2012) 11–16
Fig. 3. Left, equivalent circuit diagram for the a-Si:H(p)/a-Si:H(i)/c-Si(n) SHJ emitter (pn-junction) and the a-Si:H(p)/TCO Schottky diode. Right, measured and modeled
Suns-Voc characteristic for a SHJ solar cell precursor featuring a p-SHJ emitter/n-ITO at the illuminated and a n-SHJ BSF/n-ITO at the rear side.
Fig. 4. Measured Suns-Voc characteristics for a SHJ solar cell precursor featuring a
p-SHJ emitter/n-ITO at the illuminated and a n-SHJ BSF/n-ITO at the rear side for
various boron gas phase doping concentrations.
Fig. 5. Measured FF for hybride SHJ solar cells featuring different emitter doping
and different contact layers. ITO (blue, closed symbols), Ti (red, open symbols). The
stars and dots indicate the maximum and average FF of at least 6 cells, respectively.
significantly reduce the influence of the Schottky barrier on the
junction characteristics. On device level, our hybride SHJ cells do
clearly follow this trend.
For hybride SHJ solar cells featuring an a-Si:H(p) rear emitter
and ITO as a contact layer a similar behavior is observed, as can be
seen in Fig. 5. It can be observed that for a moderate doping of
13
1400 ppm, the FF is significant lower compared to a higher doping
of 2400 ppm. This is in agreement to Fig. 4 where a strong
influence of the Schottky contact on the Suns-Voc characteristic
is observed for the 1400 ppm layer, reflected in an ‘‘n0’’ at low
intensities ( 40 suns). Furthermore, it can be seen that for
doping higher than 2400 ppm, the FF starts to saturate. Again,
these results are in good agreement to the change of the Suns-Voc
characteristics for solar cell precursor shown in Fig. 4.
Taking a look at the influence of the contact layer on FF, it can
furthermore be seen that for Ti as contact layer, the FF is not
degraded for lower a-Si:H doping. Furthermore, it can be seen
that for a 2400 ppm layer, comparable FF are observed for ITO or
Ti as a contact layer. Summing up, it can be stated, that in
agreement with the Suns-Voc measurements, an efficient tunnel-
ing junction between the p-type a-Si:H and the n-type ITO can be
obtained for sufficient high emitter doping. By doing so, FF of
above 80% can be reached with ITO as contact layer. Nevertheless,
these experimental results indicate that the junction optimization
of the p-SHJ emitter is not only limited to the amorphous layers.
Therefore, engineering the contact layer, for instance by matching
the work function and the interface properties between the
a-Si:H(p) and the contact layer is another factor that has to be
considered.
3. Probing the effective work function at the a-si:H/contact
layer interface
To probe the influence of different contact layers (ITO or
metal) on the work function at the a-Si:H(p)/contact layer inter-
face, a test structure is used where the doped a-Si:H layer
underneath the contact layer is omitted. This results in test
structures featuring an c-Si(n)/a-Si:H(i)/contact layer emitter,
instead of the c-Si(n)/a-Si:H(i)/a-Si:H(p)/contact layer emitter
stack usually applied for the SHJ solar cells and investigated in
the previous section. As the doped layer is omitted and the
contact layer is in direct contact to the undoped/intrinsic a-Si:H
passivation layer, the influence of the contact layer work function
on the overall junction properties is now strongly enhanced.
Depending on the work function mismatch between the intrinsic
a-Si:H and the contact layer, a stronger inversion or accumulation
will be introduced. This inversion or accumulation will not be
limited to the intrinsic a-Si:H layer but will extend into the c-Si
absorber. In this case, the built-in voltage of this metal-insulator-
semiconductor (MIS)-like solar cell structure [23] will be altered
and therefore the external voltage of the test structure will be
affected. Nevertheless, the influence of the contact layer work
function on the built-in voltage will be diminished by the position
of the charge neutrality point at the interface and additionally by
the charges in the intrinsic a-Si:H bulk and at the a-Si:H/c-Si
14 M. Bivour et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 106 (2012) 11–16

Fig. 6. Open-circuit voltage Voc vs. vacuum work function of the contact layer WFvac for different metals (squares) and an ITO (star) as contact layer for MIS test structures
featuring a c-Si(n) absorber (left) and a c-Si(p) absorber (right). Also shown is the Voc for Si:H(p)/ITO (green circle, left) and for Si:H(n)/ITO (red circle, right) as contact layer
for reference. The WFvac of the contact layers (metal, ITO, a-Si:H(p) and a-Si:H(n)) is taken from [24,19,20] respectively.

interface. Even though, this method yields only indirect informa-

tion about the value of the effective work function at the a-Si:H/
contact layer interface, it seems to be very valuable as it gives
direct access to its influence on the junction properties. To be
independent from the optical properties of the contact layer
under investigation, a rear SHJ emitter design featuring a SHJ
FSF is used for these test structures. To ensure ‘‘soft’’ deposition of
the metal layers on top of the 10 nm a-Si:H(i) passivation layer,
thermal evaporation of 100 nm Au, Pd, Cu, Cr, Ti or 1000 nm Ag
and Al was performed. Furthermore, some samples received an
70 nm layer of highly conductive reactively sputtered ITO(n)
(  60 Ohm/sq) as contact layer. For the reference samples
10 nm 2400 ppm a-Si:H(p) or 830 ppm a-Si:H(n) are deposited
on top of the passivation layer to form a ‘‘real’’ SHJ emitter.
As shown in Fig. 6 (left), the Voc of the devices with a
c-Si(n) wafer shows a clear dependence on the vacuum work
function of the contact layer. For Au and Pd, which are contact
layers featuring the highest vacuum work function, the highest
Voc values are obtained, whereas for Ti and Al, which are the
contact layers featuring the lowest vacuum work function, the Fig. 7. Schematics of the band alignment of the contact layers to the a-Si:H(i)/
lowest Voc values are observed. This illustrates that there is a c-Si(n) and a-Si:H(i)/c-Si(p) junction in vacuum ‘‘before’’ contact formation. The
vacuum work function of the contact layers under investigation is depicted by the
strong dependence between the work function of the contact
blue lines (metals) and by the star (ITO) and is taken from [24,19]. The data for
layer measured in vacuum and the effective work function at the a-Si:H and c-Si are taken from AFORS-HET [20], the work function mismatch
interface that results when both layers are brought in contact. between ITO and a-Si:H(p) and ITO and a-Si:H(n) is indicated by the black arrow.
We further verify this trend in Fig. 6 (right) where the Voc of
devices featuring an c-Si(p) absorber are shown for the same
contact layers. Here, the inverse trend is observed. The fact that a function by changing the contact layer is shown by [12] for the
comparable Voc is observed for c-Si(n) and c-Si(p) devices featur- a-SiC:H(p)/ZnO:Al(n) contact of pin silicon thin film solar cells
ing ITO as an ‘‘emitter’’ indicates that the effective work function and in [13] for an inverted SHJ solar cell featuring the a-Si:H(p)/
at the interface introduced by the ITO contact layer lies around metal emitter at the rear. There, it is clearly shown that for low
mid-gap of the a-Si:H(i) layer (Fig. 7). This finding is even conductive p-type layers, a low or high work function at the
strengthened by the fact that the Voc for the investigated test interface has an negative or positive influence on the hole
structures with ITO as contact layer fits very well to the observed extraction and therefore on FF of the solar cells, respectively. An
correlation for the other metal contact layers (assuming a vacuum exception must be made for Ti which proved to yield high FF of
work function of 4.8 eV often specified for such a highly con- 81% despite its low work function when it is used as contact layer
ductive ITO [19]). This is especially true for Cu as contact layer to a-Si:H(p) [9,13]. The origin of this observation is not absolutely
featuring a comparable vacuum work function of 4.8 eV. The fact clear but might be associated to a chemical modification of the
that the ITO layer pins the effective interface work function near a-Si:H interface, as also observed for the a-Si:H/Cr contact [25],
mid-gap, at around 4.8 eV, results in the work function mismatch positively affecting the carrier transport across the junction.
to the a-Si:H(p) layer which features a higher work function/ Nevertheless, in agreement with the results from the previous
Fermi energy, see Fig. 7 left. Furthermore, we would like to point section for devices with an ITO as a contact layer, it is shown in
out that the mid-gap position of the ITO work function is not Ref. [13] that sufficient high a-Si:H(p) doping is another pre-
only representing a work function mismatch between the requisite to improve the contact properties and therefore the FF of
a-Si:H(p) and the ITO but that this is also true for the a-Si:H(n)/ the solar cell.
ITO contact, see Fig. 7 right. Nevertheless, this issue is beyond the Thinking in terms of the solar cell efficiency, the choice of the
scope of this paper. rear contact layer is limited to only a few candidates. This is
Results on device level do clearly agree with our investiga- attributed to the optical properties of the contact layer,
tions. The positive influence of manipulating the interface work influencing the rear side reflection and therefore Jsc of the solar
 M. Bivour et al. / Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells 106 (2012) 11–16
Fig. 8. Measured weighted reflection for different contact layers at the rear. For Ag
the influence of two optical layers, ITO (square) and SiOx (star) are also shown.
DJph is the simulated loss in photo-current in mA/cm2 for the individual contact
layers in respect to the Ag single layer.
cell. We have plotted the measured weighted rear side reflection
for double side shiny-etched 200 mm thick wafers. These wafers
feature a transparent SiNx anti-reflection coating at the front and
different contact layers at the rear, see Fig. 8. Furthermore,
we have simulated the corresponding losses in the photo-
generated current by matching the measured rear side reflection
to a simulated reflection curve by adapting the parameters of the
Phong-model [26] implemented in Sentaurus TCAD [27].
It is shown in Fig. 8 that for Ag, Au und Cu an excellent rear
side reflection is observed. Furthermore, it can be seen that for Ag
no significant improvement of the rear side reflection is observed
for applying an optical layer, rear ITO or SiOx.
Degradation of the junction properties by the contact layer and
thus negatively affecting all solar cell parameters is a further
criterion for the choice of the contact layer. As for the test
structures significant degradation of Voc has been observed for
Au, Pd, Cu and Al single layers after annealing at 200 1C, these
layers are not suitable for direct contacting the a-Si:H(p) rear
emitter in our hybride SHJ solar cell. Therefore only Ti, Cr and Ag
are left as possible contact layers.
Summing up, the electrical degradation of the junction proper-
ties and the rear side reflection limits the choice of the single metal
layer to Ag, as for Ti and Cr a poor rear side reflection is observed.
4. Results for hybride SHJ solar cells
Small area (4 cm2) hybride SHJ solar cells featuring a textured
front with a diffused front surface field (FSF) and a planar rear
have been fabricated [10]. Transferring the findings from the
previous section to the p-SHJ rear emitter, we could achieve an
independently confirmed FF of 81.5% for cells featuring a Ag
single layer in contact to a highly-doped a-Si:H(p) layer. This high
FF clearly demonstrates the high FF potential of the SHJ that can
be reached by a proper junction engineering. For a cell featuring a
double layer anti-reflection coating at the front, an independently
confirmed efficiency of 22.8% (Voc ¼705 mV, Jsc ¼ 39.9 mA/cm2,
FF¼81.2%) could be reached.
5. Conclusion
We have pointed out the capability of easy-to use Suns-Voc
measurements to investigate the Schottky barrier formation at
15
the a-Si(p)/ITO(n) contact. We demonstrated a good correlation
between the Suns-Voc characteristics, measured on SHJ solar cell
precursors, and its influence on the FF of finished hybride SHJ
solar cells. Thus, we emphasize the importance of these measure-
ments for the junction optimization in SHJ solar cells. Further-
more, we have shown that high doping of the a-Si:H(p) layer is
required for the formation of an efficient tunneling junction at the
a-Si(p)/ITO(n) contact. This is proven by FF’s of above 80% that can
be reached for an adequate a-Si:H(p) doping and an ITO(n) as a
contact layer. By analyzing the Voc of MIS-like solar cell test
structures we were able to demonstrate the work function
mismatch between a-Si:H and ITO. Furthermore, we could show
that the interface work function can be tuned by adapting the
contact layer. Based on these investigation we point out that
besides adapting the doping of the a-Si:H layer, it is also
important to tune the interface properties, which are dominated
by the contact layer. This junction engineering should be of
importance especially for the front SHJ where thinner doped
layers have to be used due to the parasitic absorption losses.
Summing up, for our hydride solar cells featuring a TCO-less SHJ
rear emitter we could reach a high efficiency of 22.8% and a
maximum FF of 81.5%. This high FF is clearly demonstrating the
high FF potential of the silicon heterojunction which can be
achieved by proper junction engineering.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Sebastian Schröer and Marc Rüdiger
for providing the optical simulations and Kurt U. Ritzau for
reflection measurements. This work was funded by the German
Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and
Nuclear Safety under contract number 0325292 ‘‘ForTeS’’. Martin
Bivour gratefully acknowledges the scholarship support from the
Reiner Lemoine Stiftung.
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