Highly conductive Ag nanowire hybrid electrodes improve silicon heterojunction solar cells

Replacing ITO with a hybrid nanowire-based electrode is shown to enhance efficiency in front-contacted silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells. Electrode performance was tested on practical scale (4.0 cm²) planar SHJ cells using substrate conformal imprint lithography (SCIL) for nanowire fabrication. The NW hybrid electrodes exhibit anomalous transmission and a 10-fold improvement in sheet conductance relative to the standard ITO, enabling larger finger spacings without compromising fill factor. By replacing >70% of ITO with transparent SiNx we simultaneously reduce parasitic optical absorption and reflection losses. Combined, these effects increase the short circuit current density by 1.4 mA cm^-2, yielding an absolute increase in cell efficiency of 2.2%.