Detailed review on c-Si/a-Si:H heterojunction solar cells in perspective of experimental and simulation

The crystalline silicon (c-Si) based photovoltaic (PV) technology is most dominated among other PV technologies. The world record highest efficiency of 26.7% and 26.1% on n & p-type c-Si have been reported with interdigitated back contact- Si heterojunction (IBC-SHJ) design respectively. The c-Si PV technology has potential to reach the theoretical single junction limit of 29.4%. This paper presents the detailed review on experimental and simulation evolutions of high-efficiency c-Si/a-Si:H heterojunction solar cells (HJSCs). Different Si based PV technologies like IBC-SHJ, passivated emitted rear contact, passivated emitted rear local and total diffused contact, aluminum-back surface field, tunnel oxide passivating contacts and finally dopant free carrier selective contact solar cells (SCs) have also been reviewed. Later, developments on simulation studies of HJSCs have been discussed. Several simulation tools have been developed to design SHJ SC structures and understand the performance of different parameters on SHJ SCs. Simulated high efficiency of 27% was reported by modifying thickness of various layers of bifacial SHJ SCs. An efficiency of 27.2%, 24% and 25% obtained for IBC-SHJ, TOPCon and hole selective (MoOx) SCs using simulation respectively. These results are closely comparable with experimental values. Finally, challenges and future directions to improve the performance of the SHJ SCs are discussed.