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Performance Improvement of PEDOT:PSS/N-Si Heterojunction Solar Cells by Alkaline Etching

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Abstract

The design and fabrication of PEDOT:PSS/n-Si cell have been widely studied in recent years, yet few studies have looked into the effect of Si substrate properties on device’s performance. In this study, the thinning treatment of silicon substrates based on simple and low-cost alkaline etching has been systematically investigated. It is found that the KOH etching could effectively remove the surface damage layer. The series resistance (Rs) of device can be adjusted by silicon wafer thickness, under the optimized etching condition, the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of resulting 338 μm-thick PEDOT:PSS/n-Si could reach up to 5.17%, which is 1.7-times increase by comparing that of 500 μm-thick PEDOT:PSS/n-Si (PCE:2.97%).Furthermore, KOH-isopropanol texturing was incorporated into thinning silicon wafer, the smoothing pyramid structures can further reduce light reflectance and improve the junction contact quality between PEDOT:PSS film and n-Si substrates, and the PCE of 5.49% was finally achieved. This study shows guide value for understanding the influence of substrate thickness and texturing treatment on the performance of PEDOT:PSS/n-Si solar cell.

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Availability of Data and Material

The authors declare that the data and materials for this work are available.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51974143, 51904134, 61764009, 51762043); National Key R&D Program of China (No.2018YFC1901801, No.2018YFC1901805); Major Science and Technology Projects in Yunnan Province (No.2019ZE007); Key Project of Yunnan Province Natural Science Fund (No.2018FA027); Yunnan Ten Thousand Talents Project (YNWR-QNBJ-2018-111) and the Program for Innovative Research Team in University of Ministry of Education of China (No. IRT_17R48).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Metallurgical and Energy Engineering/Key Laboratory of Complex Nonferrous Metal Resources Clean Utilization, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650093, China

    Cheng Li, Zudong He, Qidi Wang, Shaoyuan Li & Wenhui Ma

  2. Nature center for International Research on Photoelectric and Energy Materials, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Jiasen Liu & Xiuhua Chen

  3. Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia

    Shaoyuan Li & Yuanchih Chang

  4. School of Materials and Energy, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650091, China

    Xiuhua Chen

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  1. Cheng Li
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Contributions

Cheng Li:Data curation, Writing - original draft. Zudong He: Conceptualization. Qidi Wang: Software. Jiasen Liu: Software. Shaoyuan Li: Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing -review & editing. Xiuhua Chen: Funding acquisition, Visualization, Investigation. Wenhui Ma: Funding acquisition, Supervision. Y. Chang: Writing - review & editing.

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Correspondence to Shaoyuan Li.

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Highlights

• KOH etching technology is used to realize the thinning of silicon wafer.

• Random pyramid antireflection structures reducing the cell reflectance.

• The PCE of PEDOT:PSS n-Si solar cells could reach up to 5.49%.

• The series resistance (Rs) of device can be adjusted by silicon wafer thickness.

• Removing the surface damage layer and the smoothing pyramid structure textured is beneficial to the contact quality of the junction.

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Li, C., He, Z., Wang, Q. et al. Performance Improvement of PEDOT:PSS/N-Si Heterojunction Solar Cells by Alkaline Etching. Silicon 14, 2299–2307 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-021-01034-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-021-01034-2

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