Abstract
Conference Title: 2017 IEEE 44th Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC) Conference Start Date: 2017, June 25 Conference End Date: 2017, June 30 Conference Location: Washington, DC The simplicity and low thermal budget of dopant-free, selective carrier contact materials is opening up new possibilities for low-cost, high performance silicon photovoltaics. This paper describes recent progress in the exploration of magnesium and related materials such as magnesium oxide and fluoride as electron-selective contacts to lightly doped n-type cSi. A direct comparison between the three materials permits to identify significant differences in transport and recombination behaviour. All three are incorporated in n-type silicon solar cells to demonstrate their actual performance at the device level. In particular, a simple aluminium electrode, functionalized with a nanoscale Mg-based layer, significantly enhances the performance of n-type c-Si solar cells, to a conversion efficiency of ~20% equivalent to the performance of the standard p-type silicon solar cells with an alloyed Al full-area hole contact.