Structural and optical properties of ZnO nanoparticles deposited on porous silicon for mc-Si passivation

In this paper, we demonstrate the potential application of ultrathin ZnO film combined with porous Si treatment for multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) surface passivation. ZnO films were grown on porous silicon (PS) and glass substrate by spray pyrolysis method using zinc nitrate precursor with different molar concentrations varying from 0.05 to 0.25 M. The effects of molar concentration on the structural, optical and electronic properties of ZnO film were discussed. This method has been successfully used to achieve both antireflection and passivation properties of the mc-Si-treated samples. As a consequence, the effective minority carrier lifetime increases from 1 to 90 μs at a minority carrier density (Δn) of 3 × 10¹³ cm⁻³. The proposed treatment demonstrates also a significant decrease in the reflectivity of ZnO/PS-treated mc-Si as compared to untreated one. The reflectivity decreases from 32 % for untreated mc-Si wafers to 9 % for ZnO/PS-treated ones. The prepared cells give relatively high short-circuit currents (I_sc) which leads to the recorded high conversion efficiency. An optimum Zn concentration is required to optimise the solar cell efficiency. This simple and cost-effective passivation method leads to an increase of mc-Si solar cells efficiency to 12 %