In this paper, we investigated the electrical properties of crystalline silicon solar cell fabricated with Ni/Cu/Ag plating. The laser process was used to ablate silicon nitride layer as well as to form the selective emitter. Phosphoric acid layer was spin-coated to prevent damage caused by laser and formed selective emitter during laser process. As a result, the contact resistance was decreased by lower sheet resistance in electrode region. Low sheet resistance was obtained by increasing laser current, but efficiency and open circuit voltage were decreased by damage on the wafer surface. KOH treatment was used to remove the laser damage on the silicon surface prior to metalization of the front electrode by Ni/Cu/Ag plating. Ni and Cu were plated for each 4 minutes and 16 minutes and very thin layer of Ag with 1 ㎛ thickness was plated onto Ni/Cu electrode for 30 seconds to prevent oxidation of the electrode. The silicon solar cells with KOH treatment showed the 0.2% improved efficiency compared to those without treatment.

Citations

• Performance Prediction of Hybrid Energy Harvesting Devices Using Machine Learning
  Yoonbeom Park, Kyoungah Cho, Sangsig Kim
  ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.2022; 14(9): 11248.     CrossRef

We give a textured front on silicon wafer for high-efficiency solar cells by using micro contact printing method which uses PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) silicon rubber as a stamp and SAM (self assembled monolayer)s as an ink. A random pyramidal texturing have been widely used for a front-surface texturing in low cost manufacturing line although the cell with random pyramids on front surface shows relatively low efficiency than the cell with inverted pyramids patterned by normal optical lithography. In the past two decades,the micro contact printing has been intensively studied in nano technology field for high resolution patterns on silicon wafer. However, this promising printing technique has surprisingly never applied so far to silicon based solar cell industry despite their simplicity of process and attractive aspects in terms of cost competitiveness. We employ a MHA (16-mercaptohexadecanoic acid) as an ink for Au deposited SiO2/Si substrate. The SiO2 pattern which is same as the pattern printed by SAM ink on Au surface and later acts as a hard resist for anisotropic silicon etching was made by HF solution, and then inverted pyramidal pattern is formed after anisotropic wet etching. We compare three textured surface with different morphology (random texture, random pyramids and inverted pyramids) and then different geometry of inverted pyramid arrays in terms of reflectivity.

Citations

• Performance of hetero junction with intrinsic thin-layer solar cell depending upon contact resistivity of front electrode
  Youngseok Lee, Sangmyeong Han, Sunbo Kim, Sk Md Iftiquar, Youn-Jung Lee, Jinsu Yoo, Vinh Ai Dao, Junsin Yi
  Journal of Photonics for Energy.2014; 4(01): 1.     CrossRef

Screen printing is commonly used to form the front/back electrodes in silicon solar cell. But it has caused high resistance and low aspect ratio, resulting in decreased conversion efficiency in solar cell. Recently the plating method has been combined with screen-printed c-Si solar cell to reduce the resistance and improve the aspect ratio. In this paper, we investigated the effect of light induced silver plating with screen-printed c-Si solar cells and compared their electrical properties. All wafers were textured, doped, and coated with anti-reflection layer. The metallization process was carried out with screen-printing, followed by co-fired. Then we performed light induced Ag plating by changing the plating time in the range of 20 sec～5min with/without external light. For comparison, we measured the light I-V characteristics and electrode width by optical microscope. During plating, silver ions fill the porous structure established in rapid silver particle sintering during co-firing step, which results in resistance decrease and efficiency improvement. The plating rate was increased in presence of light lamp, resulting in widening the electrode with and reducing the short-circuit current by shadowing loss. With the optimized plating condition, the conversion efficiency of solar cells was increased by 0.4% due to decreased series resistance. Finally we obtained the short-circuit current of 8.66 A, open-circuit voltage of 0.632 V, fill factor of 78.2%, and efficiency of 17.8% on a silicon solar cell.

Citations

• Performance of hetero junction with intrinsic thin-layer solar cell depending upon contact resistivity of front electrode
  Youngseok Lee, Sangmyeong Han, Sunbo Kim, Sk Md Iftiquar, Youn-Jung Lee, Jinsu Yoo, Vinh Ai Dao, Junsin Yi
  Journal of Photonics for Energy.2014; 4(01): 1.     CrossRef

Resistance of the front electrode is the highest proportion of the ingredients of the series resistance in crystalline silicon solar cell. While resistance of the front electrode is decreased with larger area, it induces the optical loss, causing the conversion efficiency drop. Therefore the front electrode with high aspect ratio increasing its height and decreasing is necessary for high-efficiency solar cell in considering shadowing loss and resistance of front electrode. In this paper, we used the screen printing method to form high aspect ratio electrode by multiple printing. Screen printing is the straightforward technology to establish the electrodes in silicon solar cell fabrication. The several printed front electrodes with Ag paste on silicon wafer showed the significantly increased height and slightly widen finger. As a result, the resistance of the front electrode was decreased with multiple printing even if it slightly increased the shadowing loss. We showed the improved electrical characteristics for c-Si solar cell with repeatedly printed front electrode by 0.5%. It lays a foundation for high efficiency solar cell with high aspect ratio electrode using screen printing.

Citations

• Study on Improving Uniformity of Ag Printed Electric Line through Vacuum Annealing and Resulting Reduction in Heat Generation and High-Temperature Environmental Durability
  Sung Jun Park, Gun Woong Kim, Jaebum Jeong, Jin Hong Park, Jun Young Kim
  Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society.2024; 44(6): 145.     CrossRef