Passivated interfaces in fluorinated microcrystalline silicon thin film solar cells

The effect of a passivating buffer layer is studied in single-junction microcrystalline silicon (μc-Si:H:F) solar cells grown by PECVD from a SiF4/H2/Ar precursor mixture. We employ a variation of buffer layer thickness and absorber layer thickness in order to distinguish recombination processes occurring at the interfaces or within the bulk material. By introducing a thin amorphous i-n-layer stack between the microcrystalline intrinsic and n-doped layers an increase in open-circuit voltage (VOC) from 490 mV to 510 mV is observed for a 650 nm thin i-layer with very high Raman crystalline fraction (>85%).