Composition and electronic structure of [Formula: see text]/[Formula: see text]/Al passivating carrier selective contacts on n-type silicon solar cells.

Carrier-selective and passivating SiO[Formula: see text]/TiO[Formula: see text] heterocontacts are an attractive alternative to conventional contacts due to their high efficiency potentials combined with relatively simple processing schemes. It is widely accepted that post deposition annealing is necessary to obtain high photovoltaic efficiencies, especially for full area aluminum metallized contacts. Despite some previous high-level electron microscopy studies, the picture of atomic-scale processes underlying this improvement seems to be incomplete.