0.4% absolute efficiency increase for inline-diffused screen-printed multicrystalline silicon wafer solar cells by non-acidic deep emitter etch-back

Basu, Prabir K.; Law, F.; Shanmugam, Vinodh; Kumar, Avishek; Richter, Paul J.; Bottari, Frank J.; Hoex, Bram

doi:10.1016/j.solmat.2015.02.004

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Using a Centrotherm furnace, the wafers were n + diffused by heating to peak temperature of 870 °C to achieve 40–50 Ω/sq sheet resistance ( R sq ). The ‘SERIS etch’ was performed on diffused wafers for 3 minutes to increase R sq to a targeted value of R sq ∼ 80–90 Ω/sq. With an inline plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) system (Roth &Rau, SiNA‐XS), an antireflection and passivation layer of amorphous silicon nitride (SiN x ) with thickness of 70 nm and refractive index of 2.05 (at 633 nm) was deposited at a substrate temperature of 400 °C.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light‐induced degradation and regeneration of multicrystalline silicon Al‐BSF and PERC solar cells

Padmanabhan

Jhaveri

Sharma

et al. 2016

Physica Rapid Research Ltrs

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Light‐induced degradation (LID) is a well‐known problem faced by p‐type Czochralski (Cz) monocrystalline silicon (mono‐Si) wafer solar cells. In mono‐Si material, the physical mechanism has been traced to the formation of recombination active boron‐oxygen (B–O) complexes, which can be permanently deactivated through a regeneration process. In recent years, LID has also been identified to be a significant problem for multicrystalline silicon (multi‐Si) wafer solar cells, but the exact physical mechanism is still unknown. In this work, we study the effect of LID in two different solar cell structures, aluminium back‐surface‐field (Al‐BSF) and aluminium local back‐surface‐field (Al‐LBSF or PERC (passivated emitter and rear cell)) multi‐Si solar cells. The large‐area (156 mm × 156 mm) multi‐Si solar cells are light soaked under constant 1‐sun illumination at elevated temperatures of 90 °C. Our study shows that, in general, PERC multi‐Si solar cells degrade faster and to a greater extent than Al‐BSF multi‐Si solar cells. The total degradation and regeneration can occur within ∼320 hours for PERC cells and within ∼200 hours for Al‐BSF cells, which is much faster than the timescales previously reported for PERC cells. An important finding of this work is that Al‐BSF solar cells can also achieve almost complete regeneration, which has not been reported before. The maximum degradation in Al‐BSF cells is shown to reduce from 2% (relative) to an average of 1.5% (relative) with heavier phosphorus diffusion.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light‐induced degradation and regeneration of multicrystalline silicon Al‐BSF and PERC solar cells

Padmanabhan

Jhaveri

Sharma

et al. 2016

Physica Rapid Research Ltrs

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“…28 Thus there are no reports available for the application of acid-based heavy or deep etch-back processes. However, our earlier work [19][20][21] for inline-diffused multi-Si wafers already showed that the 'SERIS etch' is able to maintain the integrity of the textured surfaces, even for deep etch-backs up to DR sq $ 30 U sq À1 . 19 In the present work we have extended the 'SERIS etch' etch-back range to DR sq of $40 U sq À1 , and studied changes in WAR values for the as-diffused and etch-back emitters.…”

Section: Emitter Parametersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Normally the reectance of iso-textured multi-Si surfaces varies more along the complete wafer surface as compared to alkaline textured mono-Si wafers. 21 So we have selected identical location on multi-Si wafers for all the emitters, so that during reectance measurement, error in WAR values can be minimised to some extent. From Fig.…”

Section: Emitter Parametersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heavy phosphorous tube-diffusion and non-acidic deep chemical etch-back assisted efficiency enhancement of industrial multicrystalline silicon wafer solar cells

Basu

Shanmugam

et al. 2016

RSC Adv.

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“…3a . If there is no annealing or the annealing is insufficient, the barrier height and the serial resistance would become larger [ 18 – 20 ], which could severely degrade the performance of solar cell. On the other hand, if the annealing is overdone, Ag will easily penetrate through SiO 2 and into the emitter zone or even into the PN junction, then the whole device would be ruined.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

High Fill Factors of Si Solar Cells Achieved by Using an Inverse Connection Between MOS and PN Junctions

et al. 2016

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Fill factors (FFs) of ~0.87 have been obtained for crystalline Si (c-Si) solar cells based on Ag front contacts after rapid thermal annealing. The usual single PN junction model fails to explain the high FF result. A metal/oxide/semiconductor (MOS) junction at the emitter is found to be inversely connected to the PN one, and when its barrier height/e is close to the open-circuit voltage of the solar cell, very high FF is obtainable. In this work, although the open-circuit voltage (<580 mV) is not high here, the efficiency of c-Si solar cell still reaches the state-of-the-art value (>20 %) due to the high FF achieved.

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0.4% absolute efficiency increase for inline-diffused screen-printed multicrystalline silicon wafer solar cells by non-acidic deep emitter etch-back

Cited by 10 publications

References 14 publications

Light‐induced degradation and regeneration of multicrystalline silicon Al‐BSF and PERC solar cells

Light‐induced degradation and regeneration of multicrystalline silicon Al‐BSF and PERC solar cells

Heavy phosphorous tube-diffusion and non-acidic deep chemical etch-back assisted efficiency enhancement of industrial multicrystalline silicon wafer solar cells

High Fill Factors of Si Solar Cells Achieved by Using an Inverse Connection Between MOS and PN Junctions

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