Increasing the efficiency of solar cells through the use of a silicon carbide passivation layer

Surface passivation of solar cells has been shown to increase the efficiency of the cell by getting rid of dangling surface bonds which reduce the minority carrier lifetime of the solar cell. Silicon carbide has been looked at as a passivation layer because of many properties including wide bandgap and mineral toughness. Using a new method of growing silicon carbide films may yield higher minority carrier lifetimes in solar cells while solving the problem of the difficulty of working with silicon carbide. Testing of the films and wafers was done using a contactless inductive coupling method that allowed for instantaneous testing of the passivation without the need for degenerative and time consuming metal contacts.