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Abstract High carrier recombination loss at the contact regions has become the dominant factor limiting the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of crystalline silicon ( c ‐Si) solar cells. Dopant‐free carrier‐selective contacts are being intensively developed to overcome this challenge. In this work, vanadium oxide (VO x ) deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) is investigated and optimized as a potential hole‐selective contact for c ‐Si solar cells. ALD VO x films are demonstrated to simultaneously offer a good surface passivation and an acceptable contact resistivity (ρ c ) on c ‐Si, achieving a best contact recombination current density ( J 0 ) of ≈40 fA cm −2 and a minimum ρ c of ≈95 mΩ.cm 2 . Combined with a high work function of 6.0 eV, ALD VO x films are proven to be an effective hole‐selective contact on c ‐Si. By the implementation of hole‐selective VO x contact, the state‐of‐the‐art PCE of 21.6% on n ‐type c ‐Si solar cells with a high stability is demonstarted. These results demonstrate the high potential of ALD VO x as a stable hole‐transport layer for photovoltaic devices, with applications beyond c ‐Si, such as perovskite and organic solar cells.
Yang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.