N AN O E X P R E S S Open Access
Rear-Sided Passivation by SiN
x
:H Dielectric
Layer for Improved Si/PEDOT:PSS Hybrid
Heterojunction Solar Cells
Yiling Sun
1,2
, Pingqi Gao
2
, Jian He
2
, Suqiong Zhou
2
, Zhiqin Ying
2
, Xi Yang
2
, Yong Xiang
1*
and Jichun Ye
2*
Abstract
Silicon/organic hybrid solar cells have recently attracted great attention because they combine the advantages of
silicon (Si) and the organic cells. In this study, we added a patterned passivation layer of silicon nitride (SiN
x
:H) onto
the rear surface of the Si substrate in a Si/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS)
hybrid solar cell, enabling an improvement of 0.6 % in the power conversion efficiency (PCE). The addition of the
SiN
x
:H layer boosted the open circuit voltage (V
oc
) from 0.523 to 0.557 V, suggesting the well-passivation property
of the patterned SiN
x
:H thin layer that was created by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition and lithography
processes. The passivation properties that stemmed from front PEDOT:PSS, rear-SiN
x
:H, front PEDOT:PSS/rear-SiN
x
:H,
etc. are thoroughly investigated, in consideration of the process-related variations.
Keywords: Si/PEDOT:PSS, Hybrid solar cells, SiN
x
:H passivation, Photolithography
Background
Over the past several decades, crystalline silicon (c-Si)
solar cells have dominated the commercial solar cell mar-
ket due to multiple factors, such as high power conversion
efficiency (PCE) [1], abundance of raw materials, free of
toxicological issues, and well-established processing tech-
niques. However, this type of solar cells suffers from draw-
backs such expensive processing and large material
consumption due to high-temperature treatment and
thick substrate required. In recent years, organic photo-
voltaics emerge as a promising technology in the solar en-
ergy field, thanks to simple processing and low material
consumption [2–4]. The development of organic solar
cells is faced by a grand challenge: the PCE is relatively
low due to the low electron–hole separation efficiency.
The emergence of c-Si/organic hybrid photovoltaics offers
a possible route to low-cost and high-efficiency solar cells
by combining the advantages of c-Si and organic materials
[5–7]. Recently, poly(3,4ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly
(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) has stimulated intense
interest in the research community because of its advanta-
geous properties with respect to light transmission and
hole conductivity. Up to now, the PCE of PEDOT:PSS hy-
brid solar cells has been improved to above 13 % [8–10]
as a result of efforts in several areas including interface
modification [11, 12], surface texturing on Si [13–17], and
property tuning of PEDOT:PSS [18]. Typical improve-
ments related to the rear side is to add an ultra-thin inter-
facial layer of LiF [19], LiQ [9], or CsCO
3
[20] between
the c-Si layer and the back electrode, with the aims to re-
duce contact resistance and enhance the rear electric field.
With this design, the short circuit current density (J
sc
)and
open circuit voltage (V
oc
) are both enhanced. However, it
is critical to precisely control the thickness of these kinds
of layers at a certain value, in order to achieve a satisfied
contact resistance while not hindering charge carrier
collection.
For the purpose of passivating the n-type c-Si, hydro-
genated silicon nitride (SiN
x
:H) is an ideal candidate
material. SiN
x
:H [21], conventionally deposited by
plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD),
is known to be widely used in the Si-based solar cell pro-
cessing. This dielectric layer contains considerable
amount of hydrogen bonds and positive charges (typic-
ally several 10
12
cm
−2
) [22], offering good chemical and
* Correspondence: xiang@uestc.edu.cn; jichun.ye@nimte.ac.cn
1
School of Energy Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science
and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, People’s Republic of China
2
Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Ningbo 315201, People ’s Republic of China
© 2016 The Author(s). Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Sun et al. Nanoscale Research Letters (2016) 11:310
DOI 10.1186/s11671-016-1505-7