Publications by Antoine Descoeudres

Related publications (32)

Amorphous silicon oxide window layers for high-efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf, Johannes Peter Seif

In amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells, optical losses can be mitigated by replacing the amorphous silicon films by wider bandgap amorphous silicon oxide layers. In this article, we use stacks of intrinsic amorphous silicon and amorpho ...

American Institute of Physics2014

Multiple dehydrogenation reactions of negative ions in low pressure silane plasma chemistry

Christoph Hollenstein, Alan Howling, Antoine Descoeudres

Micro-particle formation in low pressure silane (SiH4) plasmas has been of technical interest and concern for at least 40 years. Negative ion plasma chemistry is a candidate for the initial nucleation, which has been extensively studied both experimentally ...

2020

Time-resolved imaging and spatially-resolved spectroscopy of electrical discharge machining plasma

Christoph Hollenstein, Antoine Descoeudres, Ricardo Pérez Suárez

The plasma created during electrical discharge machining is investigated with imaging and spatially-resolved optical emission spectroscopy. Analysis of the pre-breakdown duration shows that the breakdown is of stochastic nature. Due to the presence of gas ...

2005

Hydrogen-doped indium oxide/indium tin oxide bilayers for high-efficiency silicon heterojunction solar cells

Christophe Ballif, Corsin Battaglia, Loris Barraud, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf

The front transparent conductive oxide layer is a source of significant optical and electrical losses in silicon heterojunction solar cells because of the trade-off between free-carrier absorption and sheet resistance. We demonstrate that hydrogen-doped in ...

Elsevier2013

Scanning Laser-Beam-Induced Current Measurements of Lateral Transport Near-Junction Defects in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Christophe Ballif, Stefaan De Wolf, Antoine Descoeudres

We report the results of scanning laser-beam-induced current (LBIC) measurements on silicon heterojunction solar cells that indicate the length scale over which photogenerated carriers are sensitive to local defects at the amorphous silicon/crystalline sil ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2014

Rear-emitter silicon heterojunction solar cells with atomic layer deposited ZnO:Al serving as an alternative transparent conducting oxide to In2O3:Sn

Christophe Ballif, Matthieu Despeisse, Sylvain Nicolay, Loris Barraud, Antoine Descoeudres, Gabriel Christmann

Here high-efficiency (above 21%) large-area silicon heterojunction solar cells with atomic layer deposited ZnO:Al as front- or back-side transparent conducting oxide are demonstrated. Photoconductance decay measurements indicate that the excellent chemical ...

2019

Characterization of electrical discharge machining plasmas

Antoine Descoeudres

Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) is a well-known machining technique since more than fifty years. Its principle is to use the eroding effect on the electrodes of successive electric spark discharges created in a dielectric liquid. EDM is nowadays widel ...

EPFL2006

Manufacturing 100-mu m-thick silicon solar cells with efficiencies greater than 20% in a pilot production line

Christophe Ballif, Stefaan De Wolf, Antoine Descoeudres

Reducing wafer thickness while increasing power conversion efficiency is the most effective way to reduce cost per Watt of a silicon photovoltaic module. Within the European project 20 percent efficiency on less than 100-mu m-thick, industrially feasible c ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag2015

Amorphous Silicon/Crystalline Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Christophe Ballif, Stefaan De Wolf, Antoine Descoeudres

Silicon heterojunction solar cells are crystalline silicon-based devices in which thin amorphous silicon layers deposited on the wafer surfaces serve as passivated, carrier-selective contacts. The success of this technology is attributable to the ability o ...

Elsevier Academic Press Inc2014

A-Si:H/c-Si heterojunctions: a future mainstream technology for high-efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells ?

Christophe Ballif, Stefaan De Wolf, Loris Barraud, Antoine Descoeudres

In this contribution, we shortly review the main features of amorphous/crystalline silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells, including interface defects and requirements for high quality interfaces. We show how a process flow with a limited number of proce ...

Ieee2012

Improved amorphous/crystalline silicon interface passivation by hydrogen plasma treatment

Christophe Ballif, Loris Barraud, Benjamin Strahm, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf, Jakub Holovsky, Johannes Peter Seif, Bénédicte Demaurex

Silicon heterojunction solar cells have high open-circuit voltages thanks to excellent passivation of the wafer surfaces by thin intrinsic amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) layers deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. We show a dramatic improvem ...

2011

Asymmetric band offsets in silicon heterojunction solar cells: Impact on device performance

Christophe Ballif, Stefaan De Wolf, Loris Barraud, Antoine Descoeudres, Johannes Peter Seif

Amorphous/crystalline silicon interfaces feature considerably larger valence than conduction band offsets. In this article, we analyze the impact of such band offset asymmetry on the performance of silicon heterojunction solar cells. To this end, we use si ...

Amer Inst Physics2016

Increasing the efficiency of silicon heterojunction solar cells and modules by light soaking

Christophe Ballif, Franz-Josef Haug, Antoine Descoeudres, Jacques Levrat, Matthieu Despeisse, Stefaan De Wolf

Silicon heterojunction solar cells use crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers as optical absorbers and employ bilayers of doped/intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) to form passivating contacts. Recently, we demonstrated that such solar cells incre ...

Elsevier Science Bv2017

Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells on Quasi-mono Wafers

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Matthieu Despeisse, Mathieu Gérard Boccard, Loris Barraud, Jan Haschke, Raphaël Monnard

We applied hydrogen passivation, gettering and a combination of both to quasi-mono (qm) wafer material to enhance its bulk lifetime and prepared silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells. We find that while our applied hydrogen passivation alone seems not t ...

IEEE2018

Advanced method for electrical characterization of carrier-selective passivating contacts using transfer-length-method measurements under variable illumination

Christophe Ballif, Matthieu Despeisse, Sylvain Nicolay, Mathieu Gérard Boccard, Antoine Descoeudres, Gabriel Christmann, Bertrand Yves Paul Paviet-Salomon, Jonas Geissbühler, Laurie-Lou Senaud

2021

High-efficiency Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells: A Review

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf

De Gruyter, De Gruyter2012

Strategies for Doped Nanocrystalline Silicon Integration in Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

Christophe Ballif, Stefaan De Wolf, Aïcha Hessler-Wyser, Antoine Descoeudres, Johannes Peter Seif, Gizem Nogay, Jonas Geissbühler, Martin Ledinsky

Carrier collection in silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells is usually achieved by doped amorphous silicon layers of a few nanometers, deposited at opposite sides of the crystalline silicon wafer. These layers are often defect-rich, resulting in modest ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2016

Back-Contacted Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells With Efficiency >21%

Christophe Ballif, Antoine Descoeudres, Stefaan De Wolf, Andrea Tomasi, Bertrand Yves Paul Paviet-Salomon, Jonas Geissbühler, Silvia Martin de Nicolas Agut

We report on the fabrication of back-contacted silicon heterojunction solar cells with conversion efficiencies above 21%. Our process technology relies solely on simple and size-scalable patterning methods, with no high-temperature steps. Using in situ sha ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2014

Realization of GaInP/Si Dual-Junction Solar Cells With 29.8% 1-Sun Efficiency

Christophe Ballif, Matthieu Despeisse, Antonin Faes, Loris Barraud, Jacques Levrat, Antoine Descoeudres, Bertrand Yves Paul Paviet-Salomon, Stephanie Essig

Combining a Si solar cell with a high-bandgap top cell reduces the thermalization losses in the short wavelength and enables theoretical 1-sun efficiencies far over 30%. We have investigated the fabrication and optimization of Si-based tandem solar cells w ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2016

Raising the one-sun conversion efficiency of III-V/Si solar cells to 32.8% for two junctions and 35.9% for three junctions

Christophe Ballif, Matthieu Despeisse, Antoine Descoeudres, Loris Barraud, Stephanie Essig

Today's dominant photovoltaic technologies rely on single-junction devices, which are approaching their practical efficiency limit of 25-27%. Therefore, researchers are increasingly turning to multi-junction devices, which consist of two or more stacked su ...

Nature Publishing Group2017