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Efficient silicon solar cells applying cuprous sulfide as hole-selective contact

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Abstract

The introduction of dopant-free materials used for carrier-selective contact effectively overcomes the issue of high surface recombination velocity at aluminum back surface field. Additionally, dopant-free materials have the advantages of low fabrication temperature, simple process and considerably high efficiency. In this contribution, cuprous sulfide (Cu2S), fabricated by thermal evaporation, is applied as hole-selective contact material at rear-surface region of crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells for the first time. The band alignment of Cu2S/p-Si exhibits only a small valence band offset and huge conduction band offset being excellent hole-selective and electron blocking properties. By inserting Cu2S layer between p-Si and Ag, a lower contact resistivity of 27.2 mΩ cm2 is achieved. As a result, the introduction with 4-nm Cu2S interlayer significantly improves device efficiency to over 21%, affording a 1.2% absolute increase from the control cell. Metal sulfides introduced herein exhibit remarkable properties for carrier-selective contacts, compared to conventional metal nitrides and oxides.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by National Natural Science Foundation (NSF) of China (Grant Nos. 61774171, 61774173). The author would like to acknowledge CETC-48 Institution for their help with silicon fabrication process. L. Jin would like to thank Wenjie Lin for technical assistance with contact resistivity measurement.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Powder Metallurgy Institution, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Jin & Fuqin Zhang

  2. Institute for Solar Energy Systems, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510083, People’s Republic of China

    Lun Cai, Wenxian Wang & Hui Shen

  3. Department of Chemistry, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA

    Danmin Chen

  4. Institute of Photovoltaics, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, People’s Republic of China

    Wenxian Wang

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  1. Lei Jin
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Jin, L., Cai, L., Chen, D. et al. Efficient silicon solar cells applying cuprous sulfide as hole-selective contact. J Mater Sci 54, 12650–12658 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03797-x

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