Improved stability of amorphous silicon solar cells with p-type nanocrystalline silicon carbide window layer

In this work, a concept to mitigate light-induced degradation of thin film silicon solar cells is systematically demonstrated. To overcome the light-induced degradation of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) p-i-n solar cells, conventional p-type hydrogenated amorphous silicon-carbide (p-a-SiC:H) layer is replaced by the p-type nanocrystalline silicon carbide (p-nc-SiC:H). Current-voltage characteristics of solar cells fabricated with p-nc-SiC:H layers are evaluated. The introduction of a p-nc-SiC:H layer as a window layer for a-Si:H solar cells improves the light soaking degradation ratio from 24.6% to 15.9% compared to a-Si:H solar cells with a conventional p-a-SiC:H layers. Although the initial efficiency with p-nc-SiC:H layers is not as high as the standard a-Si:H solar cell with p-a-SiC:H layers, the stabilized efficiency of a-Si:H solar cell with p-nc-SiC:H window layer (8.0%) still exceeds that of the standard a-Si:H cell (7.7%). (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.