The Impact of Thermal Treatment on Light-Induced Degradation of Multicrystalline Silicon PERC Solar Cell

Abstract

Multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) PERC (passivated emitter and rear cell) solar cells suffer from severe light-induced degradation (LID), which mainly consists of two mechanisms, namely, BO-LID (boron⁻oxygen complex-related LID) and LeTID (light and elevated temperature induced degradation). The impact of thermal treatment on the LID of a mc-Si PERC solar cell is investigated in this work. The LID of mc-Si PERC solar cells could be alleviated by lowering the peak temperature of thermal treatment (namely sintering), perhaps because fewer impurities present in mc-Si tended to dissolve into interstitial atoms, which have the tendency to form LeTID-related recombination active complexes. The LID could also be effectively restrained by partially replacing the boron dopant with gallium, which is ascribed to the decreased amount of boron⁻oxygen (B⁻O) complexes. This work provides a facile way to solve the severe LID problem in mc-Si PERC solar cells in mass production.

Keywords

• multicrystalline silicon PERC solar cell
• light-induced degradation
• thermal treatment
• dopant