Publications by Antoine Descoeudres

Interactions between aluminium and fired passivating contacts during fire-through metallization (vol 249, 112051, 2023)

Christophe Ballif, Aïcha Hessler-Wyser, Antoine Descoeudres, Franz-Josef Haug, Mario Joe Lehmann, Andrea Ingenito, Sofia Libraro

Elsevier2024

Rear textured p-type high temperature passivating contacts and their implementation in perovskite/silicon tandem cells

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Sylvain Nicolay, Quentin Thomas Jeangros, Philippe Wyss, Soo-Jin Moon, Arnaud Walter, Andrea Ingenito

Silicon solar cells based on high temperature passivating contacts are becoming mainstream in the photovoltaic industry. Here, we developed a high-quality boron-doped poly-silicon hole contact. When combined with a co-processed phosphorus-doped poly-silico ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2023

Advanced method for electrical characterization of carrier-selective passivating contacts using transfer-length-method measurements under variable illumination

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Nicolas Badel, Sylvain Nicolay, Gabriel Christmann, Mathieu Gérard Boccard, Matthieu Despeisse, Jonas Geissbühler, Laurie-Lou Senaud, Bertrand Yves Paul Paviet-Salomon

2021

Multiple dehydrogenation reactions of negative ions in low pressure silane plasma chemistry

Christoph Hollenstein, Alan Howling, Antoine Descoeudres

Micro-particle formation in low pressure silane (SiH4) plasmas has been of technical interest and concern for at least 40 years. Negative ion plasma chemistry is a candidate for the initial nucleation, which has been extensively studied both experimentally ...

2020

Rear-emitter silicon heterojunction solar cells with atomic layer deposited ZnO:Al serving as an alternative transparent conducting oxide to In2O3:Sn

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Nicolas Badel, Sylvain Nicolay, Gabriel Christmann, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud

Here high-efficiency (above 21%) large-area silicon heterojunction solar cells with atomic layer deposited ZnO:Al as front- or back-side transparent conducting oxide are demonstrated. Photoconductance decay measurements indicate that the excellent chemical ...

2019

Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells on Quasi-mono Wafers

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Mathieu Gérard Boccard, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud, Raphaël Monnard, Jan Haschke, Brahim Aissa

We applied hydrogen passivation, gettering and a combination of both to quasi-mono (qm) wafer material to enhance its bulk lifetime and prepared silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells. We find that while our applied hydrogen passivation alone seems not t ...

IEEE2018

Interdigitated back contact silicon heterojunction solar cells featuring an interband tunnel junction enabling simplified processing

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Nicolas Badel, Benjamin Strahm, Antonin Faes, Sylvain Nicolay, Quentin Thomas Jeangros, Gabriel Christmann, Stefaan De Wolf, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud, Jonas Geissbühler, Johannes Peter Seif, Andrea Tomasi, Bertrand Yves Paul Paviet-Salomon

This paper reports on the development of an innovative back-contacted crystalline silicon solar cell with passivating contacts featuring an interband tunnel junction at its electron-collecting contacts. In this novel architecture, named "tunnel-IBC", both ...

2018

Increasing the efficiency of silicon heterojunction solar cells and modules by light soaking

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Jacques Levrat, Stefaan De Wolf, Franz-Josef Haug, Matthieu Despeisse, Eiji Kobayashi

Silicon heterojunction solar cells use crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers as optical absorbers and employ bilayers of doped/intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) to form passivating contacts. Recently, we demonstrated that such solar cells incre ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Raising the one-sun conversion efficiency of III-V/Si solar cells to 32.8% for two junctions and 35.9% for three junctions

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud, Stephanie Essig

Today's dominant photovoltaic technologies rely on single-junction devices, which are approaching their practical efficiency limit of 25-27%. Therefore, researchers are increasingly turning to multi-junction devices, which consist of two or more stacked su ...

Nature Publishing Group2017

ITO/MoOx/a-Si:H(i) Hole-Selective Contacts for Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells: Degradation Mechanisms and Cell Integration

Christophe Ballif, Aïcha Hessler-Wyser, Antoine Descoeudres, Sylvain Nicolay, Quentin Thomas Jeangros, Gabriel Christmann, Davide Sacchetto, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud, Jonas Geissbühler

Molybdenum oxide is an efficient hole collector for silicon solar cells. However, its optoelectronic properties deteriorate during cell manufacturing. To assess this issue, the optoelectronic properties and microstructure of molybdenum oxide-based hole con ...

2017

Simple processing of back-contacted silicon heterojunction solar cells using selective-area crystalline growth

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Sylvain Nicolay, Quentin Thomas Jeangros, Gabriel Christmann, Stefaan De Wolf, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud, Johannes Peter Seif, Andrea Tomasi, Bertrand Yves Paul Paviet-Salomon, Jan Haschke

For crystalline-silicon solar cells, voltages close to the theoretical limit are nowadays readily achievable when using passivating contacts. Conversely, maximal current generation requires the integration of the electron and hole contacts at the back of t ...

Nature Publishing Group2017

Realization of GaInP/Si Dual-Junction Solar Cells With 29.8% 1-Sun Efficiency

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Nicolas Badel, Antonin Faes, Jacques Levrat, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud, Bertrand Yves Paul Paviet-Salomon, Stephanie Essig

Combining a Si solar cell with a high-bandgap top cell reduces the thermalization losses in the short wavelength and enables theoretical 1-sun efficiencies far over 30%. We have investigated the fabrication and optimization of Si-based tandem solar cells w ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2016

Asymmetric band offsets in silicon heterojunction solar cells: Impact on device performance

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf, Loris Barraud, Johannes Peter Seif, Ugur Deneb Menda

Amorphous/crystalline silicon interfaces feature considerably larger valence than conduction band offsets. In this article, we analyze the impact of such band offset asymmetry on the performance of silicon heterojunction solar cells. To this end, we use si ...

Amer Inst Physics2016

Strategies for Doped Nanocrystalline Silicon Integration in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Christophe Ballif, Aïcha Hessler-Wyser, Antoine Descoeudres, Niels Holm, Martial Duchamp, Stefaan De Wolf, Jonas Geissbühler, Johannes Peter Seif, Simon Hänni, Gizem Nogay, Martin Ledinsky

Carrier collection in silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells is usually achieved by doped amorphous silicon layers of a few nanometers, deposited at opposite sides of the crystalline silicon wafer. These layers are often defect-rich, resulting in modest ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2016

Light-induced performance increase of silicon heterojunction solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Jacques Levrat, Sylvain Nicolay, Gabriel Christmann, Stefaan De Wolf, Matthieu Despeisse, Eiji Kobayashi

Silicon heterojunction solar cells consist of crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers coated with doped/intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) bilayers for passivating-contact formation. Here, we unambiguously demonstrate that carrier injection either ...

American Institute of Physics2016

Manufacturing 100-mu m-thick silicon solar cells with efficiencies greater than 20% in a pilot production line

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf

Reducing wafer thickness while increasing power conversion efficiency is the most effective way to reduce cost per Watt of a silicon photovoltaic module. Within the European project 20 percent efficiency on less than 100-mu m-thick, industrially feasible c ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag2015

Back-Contacted Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells: Optical-Loss Analysis and Mitigation

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Sylvain Nicolay, Stefaan De Wolf, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud, Andrea Tomasi, Bertrand Yves Paul Paviet-Salomon

We analyze the optical losses that occur in interdigitated back-contacted amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells. We show that in our devices, the main loss mechanisms are similar to those of two-side contacted heterojunction solar cells. ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2015

Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells With Copper-Plated Grid Electrodes: Status and Comparison With Silver Thick-Film Techniques

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Nicolas Badel, Antonin Faes, Quentin Thomas Jeangros, Stefaan De Wolf, Matthieu Despeisse, Loris Barraud, Jonas Geissbühler, Andrea Tomasi

Copper electroplating is investigated and compared with common silver printing techniques for the front metallization of silicon heterojunction solar cells. We achieve smaller feature sizes by electroplating, significantly reducing optical shadowing losses ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2014

Scanning Laser-Beam-Induced Current Measurements of Lateral Transport Near-Junction Defects in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf

We report the results of scanning laser-beam-induced current (LBIC) measurements on silicon heterojunction solar cells that indicate the length scale over which photogenerated carriers are sensitive to local defects at the amorphous silicon/crystalline sil ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2014

Amorphous silicon oxide window layers for high-efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf, Johannes Peter Seif

In amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells, optical losses can be mitigated by replacing the amorphous silicon films by wider bandgap amorphous silicon oxide layers. In this article, we use stacks of intrinsic amorphous silicon and amorpho ...

American Institute of Physics2014