In-situ deposition of tungsten oxide hole-contact by Hot-Wire CVD and its application in dopant-free heterojunction solar cells

The tungsten oxide (WO x ) thin films have been deposited by a novel hot filament oxidation-sublimation process and applied in the dopant-free heterojunction solar cells as the hole selective contacts. The oxygen flow ratio plays a significant role during the deposition process. With increasing the oxygen flow ratio from 1.7% to 6.7%, the morphology of WO x films changes from small cauliflower-like particles to large cluster accumulation, and the ratio of W6+ increases from 76.1% to 91.4% with the ratio of W5+ decreasing from 23.9% to 8.6%. The work function of WO x can be tailored in a range of 5.5–6.1 eV by increasing the oxygen flow ratio. Its optical band gap maintains above 3.2 eV with the conductivity of about 10−5 S·cm−1. We have applied the WO x films in dopant-free silicon heterojunction solar cells as the hole selective contact layer by replacing the p-type amorphous silicon layer. By taking advantage of the highly transparent WO x layer, a high photon-current density of 39.6 mA·cm−2 was achieved with the oxygen flow ratio of 1.7%. It is interesting to find that the optimum cell conversion efficiencies of 14.9% were obtained with the oxygen flow ratio of 1.7% and the thickness of 10–20 nm for the deposition of WO x layer. This work proves the feasibility and good potential of Hot-Wire CVD prepared WO x hole selective contact for efficient dopant-free silicon heterojunction solar cells.