Title:	Influence of Edge Recombinations on the Performance of Half-, Shingled- and Full Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells
Author(s):	V. Giglia, J. Veirman, R. Varache, B. Portaluppi, S. Harrison, E. Fourmond
Keywords:	Heterojunction, Recombination, Simulation, Edge Effects
Topic:	Silicon Materials and Cells
Subtopic:	Characterisation & Simulation of Si Cells
Event:	37th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition
Session:	2CO.15.4
Pages:	282 - 285
ISBN:	3-936338-73-6
Paper DOI:	10.4229/EUPVSEC20202020-2CO.15.4
Price:	0,00 EUR
Document(s):	paper

Abstract/Summary:

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Full size silicon heterojunction solar cells (SHJ) made on the pilot line at CEA-INES reach efficiencies () up to 24.5%. However, photoluminescence pictures of such cells reveal that the cell edges are the site of a significant recombination activity. Therefore, mitigating recombination at the edges can in principle represent an interesting path to unlock higher . This challenge is all the more important for cells with a high perimeter/area ratio and/or cut edges, such as half-cells and shingled cells obtained by cutting from full size cells. For such technologies, 1) the edges resulting from cutting are cleaved while 2) the remaining edges typically feature a gap where TCO is missing due to TCO masking. To our knowledge, cell edge effects for different SHJ cell configurations (full, half or shingled) have been little addressed, are poorly understood, and guidelines for efficient edge treatment are therefore still missing. The results of our investigations reveal that the native passivation quality of the cell edges is significant, which leads to a remarkably low 0.15% loss in efficiency. On the contrary, our work on the half- and shingled-cells revealed that the repassivation of the cut edges could be an efficient lever for increasing such cells efficiencies.