Fourteen percent efficiency ultrathin silicon solar cells with improved infrared light management enabled by hole‐selective transition metal oxide full‐area rear passivating contacts

Abstract The present study investigates the application of hole‐selective transition metal oxide (TMO) layers (MoO x , V 2 O x , and WO x ) with silver (Ag) as full‐area rear contact to 22.5 μm‐thick low‐quality Cz p‐type c‐Si solar cells. Thin films of metal oxides are deposited directly on p‐type c‐Si by thermal evaporation at room temperature. The large work function of these TMOs creates strong accumulation at the interface with p‐type c‐Si, which allows only holes to transport and simultaneously suppress the interfacial recombination current density ( J 0 ) and contact resistivity ( ρ c ). The current generation and losses of 22.5 μm‐thick solar cells with different hole‐selective TMO/Ag at the rear are simulated. The presence of TMO/Ag at the rear is found to significantly reduce parasitic light absorption at longer wavelengths which becomes more pronounced for ultrathin wafers, providing significant advantages over conventional Al contact. The best device performance was attained by the MoO x /p‐type c‐Si solar cells, demonstrating a considerably high efficiency ( η ) of 14% with V oc of 555 mV, FF of 76.0%, and J sc of 33.2 mA/cm 2 . Furthermore, the present work is the first to employ MoO x , V 2 O x , and WO x as rear contact in ultrathin p‐type c‐Si solar cells.