Degradation of surface quality due to anti-reflective coating deposition on silicon solar cells

We find that the front surface quality on back contacted silicon solar cells is degraded by the evaporative deposition of an anti-reflective coating. The degradation is most severe when an e-beam evaporation is performed, but there is still significant degradation with thermal evaporation. The surface recovers some after a forming gas anneal but is still degraded compared to before the evaporation. The degradation overwhelms and negates any forming gas anneal performed prior to the evaporation. The degradation is greatly reduced if the surface is not textured. We discuss the application of these results to our high efficiency silicon solar cells.