Effect of oxygen ambient during phosphorous diffusion on silicon solar cell: Fid-Bau Portal

Effect of oxygen ambient during phosphorous diffusion on silicon solar cell

Kumar, Dinesh / Saravanan, S. / Suratkar, Prakash

Phosphorous (P) diffusion is the most important and crucial process in the fabrication of silicon (Si) solar cells from p-type Si substrates. P-diffusion using phosphorous-oxycholoride (POCl3) as a precursor in a tube furnace had shown the best cell performance over the belt diffusion because of uniform dopant concentration all over the Si surface and gettering of metallic impurities present in the substrate. The emitter formation by using POCl3 is a complex and advanced process which provides the gettering and forming the unwanted dead layer on the front surface due to inactive phosphorous. Along with temperature, the ambient conditions during the diffusion process, such as gas flow rates and their composition, flow kinetics also have an impact on the emitter properties. In the present paper, the impact of oxygen (O2) flow during the diffusion process on the emitter formation and the solar cell performance were studied. It has been found that, the presence of oxygen during the diffusion process influences the concentration of inactive phosphorous over the surface and the gettering process as well. The optimized oxygen flow shows an improvement in the effective minority carrier lifetime of ∼24 μs after diffusion and an absolute efficiency gain of 0.2&percent; at pilot production.