High open-circuit voltages on thin silicon solar cells

Silicon heterostructures solar cells have very low surface recombination and the resulting cells can achieve high open circuit voltages. We have demonstrated an open circuit voltage for a silicon solar cell at 753 mV. We show high lifetimes on textured substrates with an average of 3 ms using thin layers of doped and intrinsic amorphous silicon and that the lifetimes are consistent across batches. We show that for high measured lifetimes there is a close match between the Implied VOC (measured from photoconductance) and the Actual VOC (as measured on a final cell). Recent measurements with have produced Implied VOC's of 761 mV on textured substrates.