We apply ultra‐short pulse laser ablation to create local contact openings in thermally grown passivating SiO2 layers. This technique can be used for locally contacting oxide passivated Si solar cells. We use an industrially feasible laser with a pulse duration of τpulse ∼ 10 ps. The specific contact resistance that we reach with evaporated aluminium on a 100 Ω/sq and P‐diffused emitter is in the range of 0·3–1 mΩ cm2. Ultra‐short pulse laser ablation is sufficiently damage free to abandon wet chemical etching after ablation. We measure an emitter saturation current density of J0e = (6·2 ± 1·6) × 10−13 A/cm2 on the laser‐treated areas after a selective emitter diffusion with Rsheet ∼ 20 Ω/sq into the ablated area; a value that is as low as that of reference samples that have the SiO2 layer removed by HF‐etching. Thus, laser ablation of dielectrics with pulse durations of about 10 ps is well suited to fabricate high‐efficiency Si solar cells. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

No abstract

Local contact openings in SiNx layers that passivate the front side of solar cells offer an attractive alternative to the current standard “fire-through” screen printing process for front grid fabrication. Additionally, this technology can be used for enabling a selective emitter. In the present paper, we investigate laser ablation of SiNx layers on planar and textured silicon surfaces for various laser wavelengths and pulse durations in the nanosecond (ns) to femtosecond (fs) range. We characterize the dark J-V characteristics of diodes with laser contact openings in the SiNx layer passivating the emitter. Our results show that on alkaline textured surfaces the ablation by a ns laser produces less damage than by an ultrashort pulse laser. The dark currents of alkaline textured diodes treated with picosecond (ps) or fs lasers are one order of magnitude higher than those of ns laser treated diodes. High ideality factors furthermore indicate crystal damage in the ∼500 nm deep space charge region of the diodes. Scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope images of textured samples, confirm the presence of extensive and deep crystal damage after ps laser ablation, which are not observed in laser treated samples with planar surfaces. Correspondingly, for planar surfaces we find for both, ns and for ps laser ablated regions, emitter saturation current densities J0e,abl of ∼2 pA/cm2. The recombination in textured samples in contrast differs vastly for ns and ps laser ablation. The ns laser results in an only slightly increased value of 3.7 pA/cm2 while the ps laser treated sample was not evaluable due to severe crystal damage leading to effective lifetimes of <5 μs.

Recently, it was shown that the boron-oxygen complex responsible for the light-induced lifetime degradation in oxygen-rich boron-doped silicon can be permanently deactivated by illumination at elevated temperatures. Since the degradation is particularly harmful in low-resistivity Czochralski silicon (Cz-Si), we apply the deactivation procedure to a high-efficiency rear interdigitated single evaporation emitter wrap-through solar cell made on 1.4Ωcm B-doped Cz-Si. The energy conversion efficiency is thereby increased by more than 1% absolute compared to the degraded state to 20.3% on a designated area of 92cm2 and is furthermore shown to be stable under illumination at room temperature.

Low fill factors generally limit the efficiency of emitter‐wrap‐through (EWT) solar cells. Until now, a conventional series resistance limitation along the laser‐drilled EWT vias has usually been assumed to be responsible for this effect. We demonstrate that the characteristic fill factor loss is caused by a crucial change in the diffusion currents inside the base, which are influenced by the conductivity along the laser‐drilled EWT vias. In addition, we show that the EWT via conductivity influences the fill factor loss caused by an iron contaminated base. This result affects the proposition that the EWT design is suitable for multicrystalline silicon in which interstitial iron is known to be the main contaminant. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)