To significantly impact climate change, the annual photovoltaic (PV) module production rate must dramatically increase from ~135 gigawatts (GW) in 2020 to ~3 terawatts (TW) around 2030. A key knowledge...

In this work, the efficiency potential of the fully screen-printed passivated emitter and rear contact (PERC) solar cell structure is investigated via numerical simulations. A series of improvements and optimizations are performed on bulk quality, emitter properties and metallization of screen-printed PERC solar cells based on experimental results obtained in both industry and laboratory environments. With significantly improved bulk and surface passivation quality, we find that carrier recombination losses at the metal/silicon interface will impose a substantial limitation on efficiencies, highlighting the need for developing new screen-printing technologies to overcome the limitation from contact recombination. By improving the effectiveness of the back-surface field, reducing coverage area of laser-doped selective emitters and the front metal/silicon interface contact area, a 15 mV improvement in open-circuit voltage (V OC) was achieved in our modelled cells, due to greatly reduced contact recombination losses. With the further implementation of a multi-busbar and fine-line printing technologies, efficiency above 24% was obtained from simulations. Subsequently, a comprehensive pathway towards 24% efficiency for screen-printed PERC solar cells is proposed, without the need to implement passivated contacts or transition to a plated metallisation scheme. Key target requirements for future developments are also identified.

The microwave annealing of semiconductor devices has not been extensively researched and is rarely utilized in industry, yet it has the potential to significantly reduce the time and cost associated with large-volume semiconductor processing, such as the various heating and annealing processes required in the manufacture of photovoltaic modules. In this paper, we describe microwave annealing of silicon solar cells, the effective passivation of light-induced defects, and a reduction in light-induced degradation. We find that silicon solar cells are heated rapidly in a microwave field and that effective B–O defect passivation can be achieved by microwave processing in less than 2 s. Microwave annealing yields similar results as compared to rapid thermal annealing.