Abstract
In this thesis, we investigated simple and compound high-κ materials deposited by ALD as passivation layer for silicon solar cells. Silicon solar cells were fabricated with different passivation conditions such as without any high-κ passivation, with passivation only in the front end with Al2O3 (8Å), with passivation using Al2O3 (8Å) at the front end as well as at the rear end, with passivation using Al2O3 (8Å) at the front end and using Al2O3+HfO2 (8Å) at the rear end and with passivation using HfO2 (8Å) at the front end as well as at the rear end. Solar cell efficiency obtained for the cell without any high-κ passivation was 5.637% with a Jsc of 31.394mA/cm2, Voc of 0.43V and FF of 0.417. But with front end passivation using Al2O3 (8Å), cell efficiency improved to10.352% with a Jsc of 32.121mA/cm2, Voc of 0.51V and FF of 0.631. With passivation using Al2O3 (8Å) at the front end as well as at the rear end, Voc improved to 0.57V and efficiency was 14.353%. Jsc and FF obtained for this cell were 35.624mA/cm2 and 0.707, respectively. With passivation using Al2O3 (8Å) at the front end and using Al2O3+HfO2 (8Å) at the rear end, Voc improved to 0.58V and efficiency to 14.957% with a Jsc of 36.31 mA/cm2 and FF of 0.71. Finally with passivation using HfO2 (8Å) at the front end as well as at the rear end, efficiency of the cell increased to 15.542% while Voc improved to 0.59V.