Integration of aluminium oxide as a passivation layer in a high efficiency industrial process on n-type silicon solar cells

This work aims at evaluating aluminium oxide (Al
₂
O
₃
) as an emitter passivation layer for Cz-silicon n-type solar cells fabricated with screen-printed metallization. The effect of firing on the emitter saturation current density obtained with Al
₂
O
₃
/SiN
_x
was studied and compared to the one obtained with thermal SiO
₂
/SiN
_x
. An efficiency of 18.3% was achieved using Al
₂
O
₃
for n-type solar cells, still limited by a low fill factor due to a high contact resistance.