Development of ultra-thin doped poly-Si via LPCVD and ex-situ tube diffusion for passivated contact solar cell applications

Rear side application of polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) passivated contacts has demonstrated very high efficiencies for single-junction monocrystalline silicon (mono-Si) solar cells. To further improve the device performance, one possible approach is to apply the passivated contact concept to the front side of the solar cell as well. The front side application requires the use of ultra-thin poly-Si layer in order to suppress parasitic absorption. Suitable ex-situ diffusion process should be developed accordingly without damaging the passivation provided by the very thin interface oxide (iOx). In this work, we prepared symmetric lifetime samples of ultra-thin poly-Si (