Effective impurity gettering by phosphorus- and boron-diffused polysilicon passivating contacts for silicon solar cells

This paper presents direct experimental evidence for the strong impurity gettering effects associated with the formation of both phosphorus and boron doped polysilicon/oxide passivating contacts for silicon solar cells, doped via thermal diffusion from POCl3 or BBr3 sources. Ion-implanted iron is used as a marker to quantify the gettering effectiveness via carrier lifetime measurements. The process conditions for fabricating optimum polysilicon passivating contacts are found to remove more than 99.9% of the iron from the silicon wafer bulk. The gettering effects of POCl3 and BBr3 diffused polysilicon/oxide contacts mainly arise from the dopant diffusions, as opposed to gettering by structural defects in the polysilicon films. The thin oxide interlayer hinders the gettering effectiveness at low diffusion temperatures, although its blocking effect becomes small at the moderate temperatures used to fabricate optimum polysilicon contacts. The gettering effectiveness increases with increasing diffusion temperature. The gettering of iron from the silicon wafer bulk to the surface layers is found to have a negligible impact on their ability to suppress recombination at the interface with the silicon wafer. Therefore, the formation of polysilicon/oxide passivating contacts, via thermal diffusion from POCl3 and BBr3 sources, not only achieves high quality surface and contact passivation but also has the net additional benefit of achieving very effective gettering of unwanted impurities in the silicon wafer bulk.