Asymmetric TMO–Metal–TMO Structure for Enhanced Efficiency and Long-Term Stability of Si-Based Heterojunction Solar Cells

In this study, we fabricated Si-based heterojunction solar cells (HSCs) with an asymmetric TMO–metal–TMO (TMT) structure using both MoO₃ and V₂O₅ as the hole-selective contacts. Our HSCs offer enhanced long-term stability and effective passivation for crystal defects on the Si sur-face. We analyzed the oxygen vacancy state and surface morphology of the MoO₃- and V₂O₅-TMO thin films using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy to investigate their passivation characteristics for Si surface defects. From the measured minority carrier lifetime, V₂O₅ revealed a highly improved lifetime (590 μs) compared to that of MoO₃ (122.3 μs). In addition, we evaluated the long-term stability of each TMO thin film to improve the operation stability of the HSCs. We deposited different types of TMOs as the top- and bottom-TMO layers and assessed the effect of the thickness of each TMO layer. The fabricated asymmetric TMT/Si HSCs showed noticeable improvements in efficiency (7.57%) compared to 6.29% for the conventional symmetric structure which used the same TMO material for both the top and bottom layers. Furthermore, in terms of long-term stability, the asymmetric TMT/Si HSCs demonstrated an efficiency that was 250% higher than that of symmetric TMT/Si HSCs, as determined via power conversion efficiency degradation over 2000 h which is mainly attributed by the lower oxygen vacancy of the top-TMO, V₂O₅. These results suggest that the asymmetric TMT structure is a promising approach for the fabrication of low-cost and high-efficiency Si-based HSCs with enhanced long-term stability.