Extremely low surface recombination velocities on low‐resistivity n ‐type and p ‐type crystalline silicon using dynamically deposited remote plasma silicon nitride films

Extremely low upper‐limit effective surface recombination velocities ( S eff.max ) of 5.6 and 7.4 cm/s, respectively, are obtained on ~1.5 Ω cm n ‐type and p ‐type silicon wafers, using silicon nitride (SiN x ) films dynamically deposited in an industrial inline plasma‐enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) reactor. SiN x films with optimised antireflective properties in air provide an excellent S eff.max of 9.5 cm/s after high‐temperature (>800 °C) industrial firing. Such low S eff.max values were previously only attainable for SiN x films deposited statically in laboratory reactors or after optimised annealing; however, in our case, the SiN x films were dynamically deposited onto large‐area c ‐Si wafers using a fully industrial reactor and provide excellent surface passivation results both in the as‐deposited condition and after industrial‐firing, which is a widely used process in the photovoltaic industry. Contactless corona‐voltage measurements reveal that these SiN x films contain a relatively high positive charge of (4–8) × 10 12  cm −2 combined with a relatively low interface defect density of ~5 × 10 11  eV −1  cm −2 . Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.