Mitigation of potential-induced degradation (PID) based on anti-reflection coating (ARC) structures of PERC solar cells

Abstract Most of solar power plants use high efficiency solar cell modules using PERC solar cells. Recently, Potential-induced degradation (PID) has been reported in which leakage current occurs due to voltage difference due to grounding, and efficiency and power are reduced within several years. In this work, we tried to change the structure of Anti-reflection coating (ARC) layer in order to mitigate PID in cell-level PERC solar cell. The ARC structure without SiO2, the structure with SiO2 on the surface, and the structure with SiO2 on the bottom are compared, and SiO2 must be located between SiNx and P-N junction to mitigate PID. In addition, PID phenomena occurring in PERC cells were tested for 96 h at 60 °C and 1000 V and used an improved method over the cell-level test method based on the TS IEC 62804-1 standard. Characteristics of PID phenomenon in solar cell were analysed by light I-V, dark I-V and electroluminescence. As a result, SiO2 must be between SiNx and P-N junctions to mitigate the PID. The PERC solar cell PID test using structural studies has mitigated PID by reducing efficiency by 0.04%, output power by 0.001 W, and shunt resistance by 11.77 Ω.