Low Indium and Silver Consumption for High‐Efficiency Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells: Simulating Design of Multilayer TCO and Silver‐Coated Copper Electrodes

Abstract

The rapid scaling of silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cell manufacturing is constrained by the scarcity and price volatility of indium and silver. In this study, a low‐indium and low‐silver SHJ cell structure was designed by Sentaurus TCAD optoelectronic simulation. The optimized configuration adopts a front multilayer transparent conductive oxide (TCO) stack of 5 nm indium tin oxide (ITO)/50 nm aluminum‐doped zinc oxide (AZO)/5 nm ITO with a 110 nm SiN x :H antireflection layer, a 70 nm AZO rear TCO layer, and silver‐coated copper (Ag@Cu) electrodes with a 25 μm linewidth and 80% copper core ratio. The simulated device reduces indium consumption by 92.8% and silver usage by 80% while reaching a simulated efficiency of 26.76% (open‐circuit voltage V oc = 754.1 mV, short‐circuit current density J sc = 42 mA/cm 2 , and fill factor FF = 84.49%). The simulation‐guided design integrates optical compensation by SiN x :H, carrier transport through the ultrathin ITO/AZO/ITO stack, and reduced‐shading Ag@Cu electrodes, suggesting a feasible route for lowering critical‐metal consumption in high‐efficiency SHJ solar cells.