Highly conductive and transparent ITO:Zr films for amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojnction solar cell

ITO films doped with a small amount of high-permittivity materials not only retain the basic properties of ITO films but also improve some of their properties. We report the highly conductive and transparent (ITO:Zr) films with various substrate (RT to 300oC) temperatures on glass substrate for the HIT solar cell applications. We observed a decrease in sheet resistance from 36 to $11.8{\Omega}/{\Box}$ with the increasing substrate temperature from RT to 300oC, respectively. The ITO:Zr films showed also lowest resistivity of $1.38{\times}10-4{\Omega}.cm$ and high mobility of 42.37cm-3, respectively. The surface and grain boundaries are improved with the increase of substrate temperature as shown by SEM and AFM surface morphologies. The highly conductive and transparent ITO:Zr films were employed as front electrode in HIT solar cell and the best performance of device was found to be Voc = 710 mV, Jsc = 33.70 mA/cm2, FF = 0.742, ${\eta}=17.76%$ at the substrate temperature of $200^{\circ}C$.