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Improving the Surface Passivation and Cleaning Quality of c-Si Wafers for the Application of TOPCon Solar Cells

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Abstract

The new generation of photovoltaic devices require high quality silicon wafer for solar cell fabrication. Minority carrier lifetime is a basic parameter to be considered for the fabrication of silicon-based energy devices. temporarily passivating the surface of solar-grade silicon wafers using an iodine-ethanol solution after a novel cleaning process involving acetone and ethanol in an ultrasonic bath and saw damage removal (SDR). After cleaning process and the saw damage removal, the 0.2 mol/L Iodine-Ethanol (I-E) solution was used for temporary chemical surface passivation to measure the bulk lifetime of the two types of wafers, which was measured to be 802 μs for phosphorus doped n-type wafer and 226 μs for gallium doped p-type wafer. We explored that with these passivation parameters, a Quokka 3 simulation study validates the use of these wafers in TOPCon solar cells, achieving 22.3% efficiency on p-type wafers and 23.3% on n-type c-Si wafers. Our research showcases the potential of cleaning methods and chemical passivation for solar-grade wafers in the production of high-efficiency solar cells.

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Data Availability

Data available on request from the authors.

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Funding

This research was supported by grants from the New and Renewable Energy Technology Development Program of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP) funded by the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy (MOTIE) (Project No.20218520010100). This work was also supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea Government (MSIT) (No. NRF-2022R1A4A1028702).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Interdisciplinary Program in Photovoltaic System Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Gyeonggi-Do, 16419, Suwon, Korea

    Mengmeng Chu

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Gyeonggi-Do, 16419, Suwon, Korea

    Muhammad Quddamah Khokhar & Fucheng Wang

  3. College of Information and Communication Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, 2066, Seobu-Ro, Jangan-Gu, Suwon, 16419, Gyeonggi-Do, Republic of Korea

    Suresh Kumar Dhungel & Junsin Yi

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  1. Mengmeng Chu
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  2. Muhammad Quddamah Khokhar
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  3. Fucheng Wang
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  4. Suresh Kumar Dhungel
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  5. Junsin Yi
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Contributions

Mengmeng Chu performed the conceptualization, investigation, formal analysis, data curation, write-original draft, visualization. Muhammad Quddamah Khokhar performed writing-review & Editing, Software, formal analysis, and data curation. Fucheng Wang performed investigation. Suresh Kumar Dhungel performed data curation, formal analysis, investigation, and visualization. Junsin Yi contributed for supervision, investigation, visualization, project administration, and fund acquisition.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Suresh Kumar Dhungel or Junsin Yi.

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Chu, M., Khokhar, M.Q., Wang, F. et al. Improving the Surface Passivation and Cleaning Quality of c-Si Wafers for the Application of TOPCon Solar Cells. Silicon 16, 2245–2252 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-023-02831-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-023-02831-7

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