Isolating p- and n-Doped Fingers With Intrinsic Poly-Si in Passivated Interdigitated Back Contact Silicon Solar Cells

Polycrystalline silicon on silicon oxide (poly-Si/SiO
_x
) passivating contacts enable ultrahigh-efficiency interdigitated back contact silicon solar cells. To prevent shunt between n- and p-type-doped fingers, an insulating region is required between them. We evaluate the use of intrinsic poly-Si for this isolation region. Interdigitated fingers were formed by plasma deposition of doped hydrogenated amorphous silicon through mechanically aligned shadow masks on top of a full-area intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) layer. High-temperature annealing then crystallized the a-Si:H to poly-Si and drove in the dopants. Two mechanisms were identified which cause contamination of the intrinsic poly-Si gap during processing. During deposition of doped fingers, we show using secondary ion mass spectrometry and conductivity measurements that the intrinsic gap becomes contaminated by doped a-Si:H tails several nanometers thick to concentrations of ~10
²⁰
cm
^-3
. Another source of contamination occurs during high-temperature annealing, where dopants desorb from doped regions and readsorb onto intrinsic a-Si:H. Both pathways reduce the resistivity of the intrinsic gap from ~10
⁵
to ~10
^-1
Ω·cm. We show that plasma etching of the a-Si:H surface before crystallizing with a capping layer can eliminate the contamination of the intrinsic poly-Si, maintaining a resistivity of ~10
⁵
Ω·cm. This demonstrates masked plasma deposition as a dopant patterning method for Si solar cells.