Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs) used in the antireflection layer and current spreading layer of heterojunction solar cells should have excellent optical and electrical properties. Furthermore, TCOs need a high work function over 5.2 eV to prevent the effect of emitter band-bending caused by the difference in work function between emitter and TCOs. Sn-doped In2O3 (ITO) film is a highly promising material as a TCO due to its excellent optical and electrical properties. However, ITO films have a low work function of about 4.8 eV. This low work function of ITO films leads to deterioration of the conversion efficiency of solar cells. In this work, ITO films with various Zn contents of 0, 6.9, 12.7, 28.8, and 36.6 at.% were fabricated by a co-sputtering method using ITO and AZO targets at room temperature. The optical and electrical properties of Zn-doped ITO thin films were analyzed. Then, silicon heterojunction solar cells with these films were fabricated. The 12.7 at% Zn-doped ITO films show the highest hall mobility of 35.71 cm2/Vsec. With increasing Zn content over 12.7, the hall mobility decreases. Although a small addition of Zn content increased the work function, further addition of Zn content over 12.7 at.% led to decreasing electrical properties because of the decrease in the carrier concentration and hall mobility. Silicon heterojunction solar cells with 12.7 at% Zn-doped ITO thin films showed the highest conversion efficiency of 15.8%.

Silicon heterojunction solar cells have been studied by many research groups. In this work, silicon heterojunction solar cells having a simple structure of Ag/ZnO:Al/n type a-Si:H/p type c-Si/Al were fabricated. Samples were fabricated to investigate the effect of transparent conductive oxide growth conditions on the interface between ZnO:Al layer and a-Si:H layer. One sample was deposited by ZnO:Al at low working pressure. The other sample was deposited by ZnO:Al at alternating high working pressure and low working pressure. Electrical properties and chemical properties were investigated by light I-V characteristics and AES method, respectively. The light I-V characteristics showed better efficiency on sample deposited by ZnO:Al by alternating high working pressure and low working pressure. Atomic concentrations and relative oxidation states of Si, O, and Zn were analyzed by AES method. For poor efficiency samples, Si was diffused into ZnO:Al layer and O was diffused at the interface of ZnO:Al and Si. Differentiated O KLL spectra, Zn LMM spectra, and Si KLL spectra were used for interface reaction and oxidation state. According to AES spectra, sample deposited by high working pressure was effective at reducing the interface reaction and the Si diffusion. Consequently, the efficiency was improved by suppressing the SiOx formation at the interface.

This paper investigates the dependence of a-Si:H/c-Si passivation and heterojunction solar cell performances on various cleaning processes of silicon wafers. It is observed that the passivation quality of a-Si:H thin-films on c-Si wafers depends highly on the initial H-termination properties of the wafer surface. The effective minority carrier lifetime (MCLT) of highly H-terminated wafer is beneficial for obtaining high quality passivation of a-Si:H/c-Si. The wafers passivated by p(n)-doped a-Si:H layers have low MCLT regardless of the initial H-termination quality. On the other hand, the MCLT of wafers incorporating intrinsic (i) a-Si:H as a passivation layer shows sensitive variation with initial cleaning and H-termination schemes. By applying the improved cleaning processes, we can obtain an MCLT of 100μsec after H-termination and above 600μsec after i a-Si:H thin film deposition. By adapting improved cleaning processes and by improving passivation and doped layers, we can fabricate a-Si:H/c-Si heterojunction solar cells with an active area conversion efficiency of 18.42%, which cells have an open circuit voltage of 0.670V, short circuit current of 37.31 mA/cm2 and fill factor of 0.7374. These cells show more than 20% pseudo efficiency measured by Suns-Voc with an elimination of series resistance.

In this study, the partial correlation between the expansion and the vertical displacement excluding the temperature and the correlation between the expansion and vertical displacement and the average temperature of the reinforced truss member was analyzed. The correlation coefficients between temperature and expansion, temperature and vertical displacement were .929 and .874, respectively. The correlation coefficient between vertical displacement and expansion was 0.860 and partial correlation coefficient excluding temperature effect was 0.268.