Comparison between different schemes for passivation of multicrystalline silicon solar cells by means of hydrogen plasma and front side oxidation

Different schemes for passivation of solar cells fabricated using casted multicrystalline silicon from Eurosolare are investigated. The efficiency of solar cells with front side oxide surface passivation, front side and/or back side hydrogen plasma passivation are compared. It is shown that oxide passivation of the front surface combined with hydrogen passivation from the back side is the optimum passivation scheme. A 16.2% top efficiency is obtained on 4 cm2 cells implementing this passivation scheme and a 16.8% top efficiency is estimated with an optimized ARC combination.