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1. IMPACT OF EDGE RECOMBINATION IN SMALL-AREA SOLAR
CELLS WITH EMITTER WINDOWS
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the use of emitter windows with varying passivation layers in an
intensity range between 1 and 10−3 suns. The results are compared with a cleaved sample
without emitter windows. It is found that the passivation of the nondiffused region outside the
emitter windows is very important to reduce recombination. The surface passivation schemes
investigated are the three most commonly used for solar cells: aluminum oxide, silicon dioxide,
and silicon nitride. The aluminum oxide and silicon dioxide resulted in a reduction in edge
recombination of 8 and 4.56 times, respectively. The silicon nitride passivation resulted in worse
performance than the unpassivated sample, as a result of increased recombination. The impact of
the thickness of the region outside of the emitter was investigated by reducing the outside area
from a 2-mm border to a 200-μm border. The aluminum oxide sample was hardly influenced,
while the silicon dioxide passivated sample suffered as the carrier was now able to travel to the
edge and recombine. The performance of the silicon nitride passivated sample was improved
with a reduction of the outside region. However, the performance is still reduced compared with
the control sample with unpassivated emitter edges.