Electron-Selective ‍Lithium Contacts for Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

by Jingxuan Kang, Xinbo Yang, Wenzhu Liu, Jiang Liu, Hang Xu, Thomas Allen, Stefaan De Wolf
Research Article Year: 2021 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/admi.202100015

Bibliography

Kang, J., Xinbo, Y., Liu, W., Liu, J., Xu, H., Allen, T., and De Wolf, S.

Extra Information

This study, which takes place Advanced Materials Interfaces reports metallic lithium contact, applied to crystalline silicon solar cell and proved to be an excellent electron-selective, hole-blocking transport layer with an efficiency of 19%.

Abstract

Separating photogenerated charge carriers by carrier-selective heterostructure contacts rather than by doped homojunctions is a promising pathway to approach the theoretical power conversion efficiency (PCE) limit of crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells. An electron-selective, hole-blocking lithium contact for c-Si solar cells is presented by simple thermal evaporation of air-stable Li3N powder. It is found that this lithium contact introduces only a minimal Schottky-barrier height for electron transport at its interface with lightly doped n-type c-Si surfaces, resulting in a low contact resistivity of 12.8 mΩ cm2. By implementing a full-area electron-selective lithium contact, an n-type c-Si solar cell with a PCE of 19% is achieved, representing a 4% absolute PCE improvement over reference devices with an aluminum contact. The choices of electron-selective contact materials for photovoltaic devices, using simple, scalable fabrication methods are extended.

Keywords

Crystalline silicon solar cells Electron-selective contact materials Heterostructures Lithium Photovoltaics