From Femtoseconds to Gigaseconds: Performance Degradation in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

a-Si/c-Si heterojunction solar cells hold the efficiency world record around 27%, yet their market penetration is delayed. One concern is the presence of an amorphous Si layer that some suspect may speed up the degradation of their performance. To address this concern, we developed the SolDeg structural simulation platform that is capable of capturing extremely slow degradation processes in a-Si. SolDeg integrates molecular dynamics methods that optimize the Si structure with femtosecond time steps, with the nudged elastic band method that captures the defect generation on time scales extending to gigaseconds. In this paper we report SolDeg simulations for Si-only heterojunctions. The SolDeg platform enabled us to determine the defect generation rate to be in the 15-20%/year range, translating into a 1-1.5%/year Voc degradation rate. These results establish that SolDeg can be a uniquely useful platform to describe degradation processes with an eye on finding strategies to mitigate the performance degradation of these promising heterojunction cells.