Double Heterojunction Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells: From Doped Silicon to Dopant-Free Passivating Contacts
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
thank you for a nice review paper. I liked your review paper a lot. Only thing that comes to my mind is that you have very long sections on c-Si cells and the amorphous silicon based passivating contacts, when your title is more about dopant free passivating contacts. May be you can review to see if you can slightly shorten this to more suit your title, as there are already several reviews on this topic. You can find my other comments directly in the manuscript.
Best Regards,
Reviewer
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Reply to reviewer 1 photonics-1797110
We thank the reviewer for the positive opinion and annotated comments in the manuscript.
As advised by reviewer 1, we have shortened the manuscript slightly in section 3.1 at page 10 by removing some sentences. The last paragraph of section 1 has also been shortened. In addition, we have made the following amendments:
- One sentence has been added in line 66 to state that the PCE of industrial cells are lower than the record efficiency laboratory cells
- In line 85, we have added anti-reflection coating
- In line 105, we have added a sentence to state that for bifacial cells, the footprint of the electrodes is not much smaller than the back electrode
- We have added a sentence in line 83 to state that the current state of the art is the PERC cell
- The typographic errors for TOPCon have been corrected
- In line 580, we have added one sentence to state that for thicker oxides, the current will flow mainly through the pinholes in the oxide layer
- Two new references [65,66] on i-TOPCon devices have been added in Table 1
- One sentence has been added at line 623 to mention the yield issue that can be caused by amorphous Si deposition.
Terence KS Wong
Corresponding author
Reviewer 2 Report
The article is correct. It provides a summary of the use of selective contacts in solar cells based on crystalline silicon. It does not go into depth in the existing physics behind the selectivity offered by the contacts, but it describes in a very good part the large number of compounds that have been used as contacts. selective on crystalline silicon.
I have only found missing more IBC articles and some articles that use dipoles as a method to improve selectivity.
In short, a correct review, which is added to some already published
Author Response
The authors thank the reviewer for the positive comments on our manuscript. We have added two new references in section 3.2 on the interdigitated back contact c-Si solar cells with polysilicon contacts ([58], page 12 and [63], page 14). As a result of this, a new entry has been added to Table 1. Three new references on the use of dipoles to enhance carrier selectivity have been added to section 4.5 ([102,103,1-4, page 22). This section is now renamed 'Other metal oxides'.
Reviewer 3 Report
General comments:
In the article titled “Double heterojunction crystalline silicon solar cells: from doped silicon to dopant free passivating contacts” provide a review the main advances in the development of the latest developments in double heterojunction (DHJ) c-Si solar cell. This article provides good insight to the development of Si solar cell. However, for a better understanding it should be integrated considering the following aspects:
1. It should be summarized chapter by chapter into table form to make easier the reader to understand the review.
2. Please add also the limitation from each study reviewed including the limitation of fabrication method into the table!
3. Please add the chapter “challenges and future aspect” separately from the other chapter and describe in detail.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for the positive comments on this manuscript. In accordance with requirements, we have added a summary table 2 in page 26 to summarize the key points covered in sections 2-5. The fabrication techniques for each type of carrier selective contacts are mentioned together with their limitations. Section 6 has been renamed 'Challenges and outlook'. We discuss in more detail the research challenges for the field of double heterojunction c-Si solar cells and its future development. A new reference [113] has been added.
