Crystalline silicon solar cells have attracted great attention for their various advantages, such as the availability of raw materials, high-efficiency potential, and well-established processing sequence. Tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cells are widely regarded as one of the most prospective candidates for the next generation of high-performance solar cells because an efficiency of 26% has been achieved in small-area solar cells. Compared to n-type TOPCon solar cells, the photo conversion efficiency (PCE) of p-type TOPCon is slightly higher. The highest PCEs of p-type TOPCon and n-type TOPCon solar cells are 26.0% and 25.8%, respectively. Despite the highest efficiency in small-area cells, limited progress has been achieved in p-type TOPCon solar cells for large are due to their lower carrier lifetime and inferior surface passivation with the boron-doped c-Si wafer. Nevertheless, it is of great importance to promoting the p-type TOPCon technology due to its lower price and well-established manufacturing procedures with slight modifications in the PERC solar cells production lines. The progress in different approaches to increase the efficiencies of p-type TOPCon solar cells has been reported in this review article and is expected to set valuable strategies to promote the passivation technology of p-type TOPCon, which could further increase the efficiency of TOPCon solar cells.
Gallium Oxide (Ga2O3) is preferred as a material for next generation power semiconductors. The Ga2O3 should solve the disadvantages of low thermal resistance characteristics and difficulty in forming an inversion layer through p-type ion implantation. However, Ga2O3 is difficult to inject p-type ions, so it is being studied in a heterojunction structure using p-type oxides, such as NiO, SnO, and Cu2O. Research the lateral-type FET structure of NiO/Ga2O3 heterojunction under the Gate contact using the Sentaurus TCAD simulation. At this time, the VG-ID and VD-ID curves were identified by the thickness of the Epi-region (channel) and the doping concentration of NiO of 1 × 1017 to 1 × 1019 cm-3. The increase in Epi region thickness has a lower threshold voltage from -4.4 V to -9.3 V at ID = 1 × 10-8 mA/mm, as current does not flow only when the depletion of the PN junction extends to the Epi/Sub interface. As an increase of NiO doping concentration, increases the depletion area in Ga2O3 region and a high electric field distribution on PN junction, and thus the breakdown voltage increases from 512 V to 636 V at ID =1 × 10-3 A/mm.
p-type Tunnel Oxide Passivating Contacts (TOPCon) solar cell is fabricated with a poly-Si/SiOx structure. It simultaneously achieves surface passivation and enhances the carriers’ selective collection, which is a promising technology for conventional solar cells. The quality of passivation is depended on the quality of the tunnel oxide layer at the interface with the c-Si wafer, which is affected by the bond of SiO formed during the subsequent annealing process. The highest cell efficiency reported to date for the laboratory scale has increased to 26.1%, fabricated by the Institute for Solar Energy Research. The cells used a p-type float zone silicon with an interdigitated back contact (IBC) structure that fabricates poly-Si and SiOx layer achieves the highest implied open-circuit voltage (iVoc) is 750 mV, and the highest level of edge passivation is 40%. This review presents an overview of p-type TOPCon technologies, including the ultra-thin silicon oxide layer (SiOx) and poly-silicon layer (poly-Si), as well as the advancement of the SiOx and poly-Si layers. Subsequently, the limitations of improving efficiency are discussed in detail. Consequently, it is expected to provide a basis for the simplification of industrial mass production.
Nickel oxide is a nonstoichiometric transparent conductive oxide with p-type conductivity, a wide-band energy gap of 3.4~4.0 eV, and excellent chemical stability, making it a very important candidate as a material for bipolar devices.P-type conductivity in Transparent Conductive Oxides (TCO) is controlled by the oxygen vacancy concentration. During the TCO film deposition process, additional oxygen diffusing into the NiO structure causes the formation of Ni 3p ions and Ni vacancies. This eventually affects the hole concentration of the p-type oxide thin film. In this work, the surface morphology and the electrical characteristics were confirmed in accordance with the annealing atmosphere of the nickel oxide thin film.
In this work, the effect of sputtering working pressure for the tellurium film and its thin-film transistor was investigated. The transfer characteristics of tellurium thin-film transistors were improved by increasing the working pressure during sputtering process. As increasing working pressure, physical and optical properties of Te films such as crystallinity, transmittance, and surface roughness were improved. Therefore, the improved transfer characteristics of Te thin-film transistors may originate from both improved interface properties between the silicon oxide gate dielectric layer and the tellurium active layer with an improved quality of Te film. In conclusion, the control of working pressure during sputtering would be important for obtaining highperformance tellurium-based thin film transistor.
Power factor improvement at high temperatures has been a major research topic for the development of skutterudite thermoelectric materials. Here, we attempted to optimize the process parameters for manufacturing skutterudite materials, especially for p-type systems. We focused on the effect of aging time variation to maximize the hightemperature performance of the Ce-filled Fe3CoSb12 skutterudite system. The optimized aging time was concluded to be a key parameter for the formation of single-phase nanostructures in this p-type skutterudite system. The optimized condition was effective in reducing the bipolar effect at high temperature ranges by increasing the carrier concentration in the p-type system. To confirm the conclusions, the electrical conductivity, Seebeck coefficient, and power factor were measured. The results matched well with the microstructure and with those of an XRD analysis performed for the system.
In this work, we investigate the effects of lithium doping on the electric performance of solution-processed n-type zinc tin oxide (ZTO)/p-type silicon carbide (SiC) heterojunction diode structures. The proper amount of lithium doping not only affects the carrier concentration and interface quality but also influences the temperature sensitivity of the series resistance and activation energy. We confirmed that the device characteristics vary with lithium doping at concentrations of 0, 10, and 20 wt%. In particular, the highest rectification ratio of 1.89×107 and the lowest trap density of 4.829×1,022 cm-2 were observed at 20 wt% of lithium doping. Devices at this doping level showed the best characteristics. As the temperature was increased, the series resistance value decreased. Additionally, the activation energy was observed to change with respect to the component acting on the trap. We have demonstrated that lithium doping is an effective way to obtain a higher performance ZTO-based diode.
MOS-FET structured gas sensors were manufactured using MWCNTs for application as NOx gas sensors. As the gas sensors need to be heated to facilitate desorption of the gas molecules, heat dispersion plays a key role in boosting the degree of uniformity of molecular desorption. We report the desorption of gas molecules from the sensor at 150℃ for different sensor electrode gaps (30, 60, and 90 μm). The COMSOL analysis program was used to verify the process of heat dispersion. For heat analysis, structure of FET gas sensor modeling was proceeded. In addition, a property value of the material was used for two-dimensional modeling. To ascertain the degree of heat dispersion by FEM, the governing equations were presented as partial differential equations. The heat analysis revealed that although a large electrode gap is advantageous for effective gas adsorption, consideration of the heat dispersion gradient indicated that the optimal electrode gap for the sensor is 60 μm.
Molybdenum oxide (MoO3) offers pivotal advantages for high optical transparency and low light reflection. Considering device fabrication, n-type MoO3 semiconductor can spontaneously establish a junction with p-type Si. Since the energy bandgap of Si is 1.12 eV, a maximum photon wavelength of around 1,100 nm is required to initiate effective photoelectric reaction. However, the utilization of infrared photons is very limited for Si photonics. Hence, to enhance the Si photoelectric devices, we applied the wide energy bandgap MoO3 (3.7 eV) top-layer onto Si. Using a large-scale production method, a wafer-scale MoO3 device was fabricated with a highly crystalline structure. The MoO3/p-Si heterojunction device provides distinct photoresponses for long wavelength photons at 900 nm and 1,100 nm with extremely fast response times: rise time of 65.69 ms and fall time of 71.82 ms. We demonstrate the high-performing MoO3/p-Si infrared photodetector and provide a design scheme for the extension of Si for the utilization of long-wavelength light.
Transparent n-type metal-oxide semiconductor of MoOx was applied on a p-type Si substrate for high-performing heterojunction photodetector. The formation of MoOx on Si spontaneously established a rectifying current flow with a high rectification ratio of 1,252.3%. Under light illumination condition, n-type MoOx/p-type Si heterojunction device provided significantly fast responses (rise time : 61.28 ms, fall time : 66.26 ms). This transparent metal-oxide layer (MoOx) would provide a functional route for various photoelectric devices, including photodetectors and solar cells.
For feasible study of opto-electrical application regarding to oxide semiconductor, weimplemented the N doped ZnO growth using a atomic layer deposition technique. The p-type ZnOdeposition, necessary for ZnO-based optoelectronics, has considered to be very difficulty due tosufficiently deep acceptor location and self-compensating process on doping. Various sources of N such asN2, NH3, NO, and NO2 and deposition techniques have been used to fabricate p-type ZnO. Hallmeasurement showed that p-type ZnO was prepared in condition with low deposition temperature anddopant concentration. From the evaluation of photoluminescence spectroscopy, we could observe defectformation formed by N dopant. In this paper, we exhibited the electrical and optical properties of N-dopedZnO thin films grown by atomic layer deposition with NH3OH doping source.
Carbon nanotubes(CNT) have excellent electrical, chemical stability and mechanical properties. These can be used in a variety of fields. MWCNT are extremely sensitive for minute changes in the ambient gas, namely, their sensing properties varies greatly with the absorption of gas such as NOx and H2. We investigate the electrical properties of CNTs and make a NOx gas sensor based on Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) materials. We obtained the NOx gas sensor of MWCNT based on P-type Si wafer that has the resistivity of 1.667×10-1 [Ω·cm]. We knew that the sensitivity of sensor decreased with increasing of NOx gas concentration. And the sensitivity of sensor shows the largest value at 20℃. The sensitivity of sensor decrease with increasing the temperature. Also absorption energy of NOx gas molecule on the MWCNT surface decreases with increasing concentration of NOx gas.