Influence of PECVD Deposition Power and Pressure on Phosphorus-Doped Polysilicon Passivating Contacts

Passivating contacts for silicon solar cells can be fabricated by depositing a layer of intrinsic amorphous silicon (a-Si) by the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) onto an oxidized silicon wafer, followed by a thermal POCl3 diffusion process. This article describes the influence of the main PECVD parameters, power and pressure, on the electrical performance of such phosphorus-doped polysilicon (doped-Si/SiOx) passivating contacts. We characterize their properties in terms of the passivation quality and carrier selectivity for different PECVD powers and pressures. The deposition power settings from 350 to 800 W are tried, the highest iVoc value of 721 mV is achieved at a power of 500 W. The higher deposition powers (≥650 W) lead to blistering issues and possible interface damage, while a lower deposition power (350 W) leads to incomplete decomposition of the precursor gas, resulting in a lower passivation quality. Meanwhile, the power has a marginal impact on the contact resistivity. On the other hand, the deposition pressure has only a slight impact on the passivation quality, while significant changes are observed on the contact resistivity. A lower pressure (0.1 mbar) leads to a higher contact resistivity, while the low and consistent contact resistivity values of 5.8 mΩ·cm2 are obtained at the pressures above 0.2 mbar.