SiO2antireflection coatings fabricated by electron-beam evaporation for black monocrystalline silicon solar cells

Abstract

In this work we prepared double-layer antireflection coatings (DARC) by using the SiO2/SiNx:H heterostructure design. SiO2thinfilms were deposited by electron-beam evaporation on the conventional solar cell with SiNx:H single-layer antireflection coatings(SARC), while to avoid the coverage of SiO2on the front side busbars, a steel mask was utilized as the shelter. The thickness ofthe SiNx:H as bottom layer was fixed at 80 nm, and the varied thicknesses of the SiO2as top layer were 105 nm and 122 nm. Theresults show that the SiO2/SiNx:H DARC have a much lower reflectance and higher external quantum efficiency (EQE) in shortwavelengths compared with the SiNx:H SARC. A higher energy conversion efficiency of 17.80% was obtained for solar cells withSiO2(105 nm)/SiNx:H (80 nm) DARC, an absolute conversion efficiency increase of 0.32% compared with the conventional singleSiNx:H-coated cells.