Low resistivity efficient passivated silicon solar cells

Since 1983, surface passivation combined with other technology has so successfully been used for MINP, PESC, PERC and PERL, that they formed a new family of solar cell named passivated silicon solar cells. Their conversion efficiency broke through 18% barrier (AM1.5) in 1983 and reached values of 23/spl sim/24% (AM1.5) in 1990 representing leading results in the area of low resistivity silicon solar cells. In this paper, results of passivated silicon solar cells are introduced. Structures and main features of MINP, PESC PERC and PERL solar cells are presented and analysed respectively.