Experimental and theoretical verification of the presence of inversion region in a-Si/c-Si heterojunction solar cells with an intrinsic layer

Photovoltaic devices based on amorphous silicon (a-Si)/ crystalline silicon (c-Si) heterostructure exhibits excellent surface passivation with the highest open circuit voltage being reported on these devices. A plausible explanation for these devices to show low recombination is that the junction is induced in c-Si and an inversion region is present at the heterointerface. In this work, the presence of the inversion region at the heterointerface between intrinsic a-Si and c-Si is theoretically shown by a computer model developed in the commercial simulator Sentaurus and experimentally corroborated by lateral conductance measurement technique.