Crystalline silicon solar cells have attracted great attention for their various advantages, such as the availability of raw materials, high-efficiency potential, and well-established processing sequence. Tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cells are widely regarded as one of the most prospective candidates for the next generation of high-performance solar cells because an efficiency of 26% has been achieved in small-area solar cells. Compared to n-type TOPCon solar cells, the photo conversion efficiency (PCE) of p-type TOPCon is slightly higher. The highest PCEs of p-type TOPCon and n-type TOPCon solar cells are 26.0% and 25.8%, respectively. Despite the highest efficiency in small-area cells, limited progress has been achieved in p-type TOPCon solar cells for large are due to their lower carrier lifetime and inferior surface passivation with the boron-doped c-Si wafer. Nevertheless, it is of great importance to promoting the p-type TOPCon technology due to its lower price and well-established manufacturing procedures with slight modifications in the PERC solar cells production lines. The progress in different approaches to increase the efficiencies of p-type TOPCon solar cells has been reported in this review article and is expected to set valuable strategies to promote the passivation technology of p-type TOPCon, which could further increase the efficiency of TOPCon solar cells.

p-type Tunnel Oxide Passivating Contacts (TOPCon) solar cell is fabricated with a poly-Si/SiO_x structure. It simultaneously achieves surface passivation and enhances the carriers’ selective collection, which is a promising technology for conventional solar cells. The quality of passivation is depended on the quality of the tunnel oxide layer at the interface with the c-Si wafer, which is affected by the bond of SiO formed during the subsequent annealing process. The highest cell efficiency reported to date for the laboratory scale has increased to 26.1%, fabricated by the Institute for Solar Energy Research. The cells used a p-type float zone silicon with an interdigitated back contact (IBC) structure that fabricates poly-Si and SiO_x layer achieves the highest implied open-circuit voltage (iV_oc) is 750 mV, and the highest level of edge passivation is 40%. This review presents an overview of p-type TOPCon technologies, including the ultra-thin silicon oxide layer (SiO_x) and poly-silicon layer (poly-Si), as well as the advancement of the SiO_x and poly-Si layers. Subsequently, the limitations of improving efficiency are discussed in detail. Consequently, it is expected to provide a basis for the simplification of industrial mass production.

Numerical simulation is a good way to predict the conversion efficiency of solar cells without a direct experimentation and to achieve low cost and high efficiency through optimizing each step of solar cell fabrication. TOPCon industrial solar cells fabricated with n-type silicon wafers on a larger area have achieved a higher efficiency than p-type TOPCon solar cells. Electrical and optical losses of the front surface are the main factors limiting the efficiency of the solar cell. In this work, an optimization of boron-doped emitter surface and front electrodes through numerical simulation using “Griddler” is reported. Through the analysis of the results of simulation, it was confirmed that the emitter sheet resistance of 150 Ω/sq along the front electrodes having a finger width of 20 μm, and the number of finger lines ~130 for silicon wafer of M6 size is an optimized technology for the front emitter surface of the n-type TOPCon solar cells that can be developed.

In order to achieve a high efficiency for the silicon solar cell, a passivation characteristic that minimizes the electrical loss at a silicon interface is required. In this paper, we evaluated the applicability of the oxide film formed by ozone for the tunnel silicon oxide film. To this end, we fabricated the silicon oxide film by changing the condition of ozone oxidation and compared the characteristics with the oxide film formed by the existing nitric acid solution. The ozone oxidation was formed in the temperature range of 300~500℃ at an ozone concentration of 17.5 wt%, and the passivation characteristics were compared. Compared to the silicon oxide film formed by nitric acid oxidation, implied open circuit voltage (iVoc) was improved by ~20 mV in the ozone oxidation and the ozone oxidation after the nitric acid pretreatment was improved by ~30 mV.