Recombination at textured silicon surfaces passivated with silicon dioxide

The surfaces of solar cells are often textured to increase their capacity to absorb light. This optical benefit is partially offset, however, by an increase in carrier recombination at or near the textured surface. A review of past work shows that the additional recombination invoked by a textured surface varies greatly from one experiment to another. For example, in the most commonly investigated structure—pyramidal textured silicon diffused with phosphorus and passivated with a hydrogenated oxide—recombination ranges from being 1–12 times more than in an equivalently prepared planar {100} surface. Examination of these experiments reveals consistent trends: small increases in recombination occur when the surface is very heavily diffused and dominated by Auger recombination, while larger increases in recombination occur when the surface is lightly diffused and dominated by Shockley–Read–Hall recombination at the surface, making the latter depend critically on surface area and the density of surface states. Comparisons of pyramidal and planar {100} surfaces indicate that when lightly diffused, the difference in recombination is substantially greater than the difference in surface area (1.73) and it is regularly attributed to the pyramid facets having {111} orientations—well known for their higher density of dangling bonds than {100} orientations. This high dangling-bond density makes recombination at pyramidal facets strongly dependent on the passivation scheme, and it is variations in these schemes that led to the wide range of results observed in experimental studies. In addition to surface area and crystal orientation, some experiments suggest a third mechanism that enhances recombination on oxide-passivated pyramids. With capacitance-voltage and photoconductance measurements, we confirm this speculation, showing that oxide-passivated pyramidal textured silicon has a higher density of interface states than can be accounted for by surface area and orientation, and that the additional defects are predominantly acceptorlike when above, or donorlike when below, an energy of 0.3 eV higher than the valence band.