Continuously deposited anti-reflection double layer of silicon nitride and silicon oxynitride for selective emitter solar cells by PECVD

Silicon oxynitride (SiON) could be used in combination with silicon nitride (SiN) to form a multilayer anti-reflection coating on the front side of selective emitter solar cells. In this study, these double anti-reflection layers were fabricated by a continuous deposition technique using the plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition method. We attempted to determine whether this method is fast and cost effective and can achieve higher efficiency for solar cell manufacture. The results show that the short circuit current density for the double layer anti-reflection coating on selective emitter solar cells was higher by 0.5 mA/cm2 compared to the single layer coating owing to the improved optical reflectance. The incorporation of a SiN/SiON stack into the anti-reflection layer of the CZ selective emitter solar cells yields an energy conversion efficiency of 19.4%, which is higher than the efficiency (19.18%) for the reference solar cells with single layer SiN anti-reflection coating.