Impact of wafer properties and production processes on the degradation in industrial PERC solar cells

Light-induced degradation (LID) and light- and elevated temperature-induced degradation (LeTID) are well-known degradation mechanisms in crystalline silicon (c-Si). PERC cells, which are currently the dominant solar cell device structure, have shown to be more susceptible to LeTID than conventional Al-BSF cells, which makes this degradation a serious concern for the photovoltaic (PV) industry. In this work, we demonstrate the impact of various industrial production steps on the extent of degradation in industrial PERC devices fabricated at a high-volume production line. We observe that the extent of degradation depends on the thickness of the silicon substrate and the silicon nitride deposition method. These results highlight the importance of processing cell parameters on the degradation in silicon cells.