Surface passivation is crucial for many high-performance solid-state devices, especially solar cells. It has been proposed that 2D hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) films can provide near-ideal passivation due to their wide bandgap, lack of dangling bonds, high dielectric constant, and easy transferability to a range of substrates without disturbing their bulk properties. However, so far, the passivation of hBN has been studied for small areas, mainly because of its small sizes. Here, we report the passivation characteristics of wafer-scale, few monolayers thick, hBN grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. Using a recently reported ITO/i-InP/p⁺-InP solar cell structure, we show a significant improvement in solar cell performance utilizing a few monolayers of hBN as the passivation layer. Interface defect density (at the hBN/i-InP) calculated using C–V measurement was 2 × 10¹² eV⁻¹cm⁻² and was found comparable to several previously reported passivation layers. Thus, hBN may, in the future, be a possible candidate to achieve high-quality passivation. hBN-based passivation layers can mainly be useful in cases where the growth of lattice-matched passivation layers is complicated, as in the case of thin-film vapor–liquid–solid and close-spaced vapor transport-based III–V semiconductor growth techniques.

表面钝化对于许多高性能固态设备（尤其是太阳能电池）至关重要。已经提出，二维六方氮化硼（hBN）膜由于其宽带隙宽，缺乏悬空键，高介电常数以及易于转移至一系列基材而不会破坏其整体性能，因此可以提供近乎理想的钝化。但是，到目前为止，主要由于hBN的尺寸小，已经对其进行了钝化研究。在这里，我们报告了通过金属有机化学气相沉积法生长的晶片级钝化特性，几层单分子膜厚，hBN的生长。使用最近报告的ITO / i-InP / p ⁺-InP太阳能电池结构中，我们使用了几层hBN单层作为钝化层，显示了太阳能电池性能的显着提高。使用C – V测量得出的界面缺陷密度（在hBN / i-InP下）为2×10 ¹²  eV ^-1 cm ^-2，发现与先前报道的多个钝化层相当。因此，将来，hBN可能是实现高质量钝化的一种可能。基于hBN的钝化层主要适用于晶格匹配的钝化层生长复杂的情况，例如基于薄膜气液固和近距离气相传输的III-V半导体生长技术。