Comparison of passivation properties of plasma-assisted ALD and APCVD deposited Al2O3 with SiNx capping

In this paper, we report on the direct comparison of Al2O3 films deposited by plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (APCVD) techniques on the passivation properties of both bare and boron diffused Si surfaces. It is found that ALD and APCVD deposited Al2O3 layers with SiNx capping have very similar chemical composition, hydrogen concentration at the Al2O3/Si interface, and interface defect density (D-it), but the ALD film has slightly higher negative fixed charge (Q(f)) after a high temperature (similar to 750 degrees C) contact firing cycle typically used for solar cell fabrication. Both films showed excellent surface recombination velocities of <5 cm/s on planar and textured un-diffused Si wafers, but the ALD films gave 1 to 8 fA/cm(2) lower emitter saturation current densities (J(0e)) on implanted boron emitters with sheet resistance in the range of 90-180 Omega/square. This is attributed to the observed slightly higher negative charge-induced field-effect passivation in the ALD films. However, Sibl(x)/Al2O3/p(+)/n/n(+) passivated emitter rear totally diffused (PERT) cell structures fabricated with 110 and 150 Omega/square emitter in this study showed no appreciable difference in cell efficiency. Device analysis and simulations showed that even for >23% high-performance solar cells design, with very low bulk and rear contact recombination, the observed small difference in J(0e) has negligible effect on cell efficiency. Thus, APCVD Al2O3 passivation of B emitter can produce comparable efficiencies to their counterpart ALD Al2O3 passivated n-type Si solar cells.