Inkjet Printing for Silicon Solar Cells

Liu, Han-Chang; Chuang, Chia-Pin; Chen, Yi-Tsun; Du, Chen-Hsun

doi:10.1007/s11267-009-9240-z

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Solar cell production is one of the earliest applications of the inkjet printing of conductive materials (Teng and Vest, 1988a, b). The process has been used to deposit the front metallization (Teng and Vest, 1988b; Rivkin et al , 2002; Curtis et al , 2006; Kaydanova et al , 2003; Liu et al , 2009; Gizachew et al , 2011), to texture the surface for improved efficiencies and to form openings to the semiconductor layers (Lennon et al , 2008; Utama et al , 2008).…”

Section: Applications For Inkjet Printing Of Conductive Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inkjet printing of conductive materials: a review

2012

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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an exhaustive review of research studies and activities in the inkjet printing of conductive materials.Design/methodology/approachThis paper gives a detailed literature survey of research carried out in inkjet printing of conductive materials.FindingsThis article explains the inkjet printing process and the various types of conductive inks. It then examines the various factors that affect the quality of inkjet printed interconnects such as printing parameters, materials and substrate treatments. Methods of characterising both the inkjet printing process and the electrical properties of printed conductive materials are also presented. Finally relevant applications of this technology are described.Originality/valueInkjet printing is currently one of the cheapest direct write techniques for manufacturing. The use of this technique in electronic manufacturing, where interconnects and other conductive features are required is an area of increasing relevance to the fields of electronics manufacturing, packaging and assembly. This review paper would therefore be of great value and interest to this community.

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Section: Applications For Inkjet Printing Of Conductive Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inkjet printing of conductive materials: a review

2012

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“…Several process routes were reported where either no ARC was present on the wafer surface or where the ARC was removed prior to inkjet‐printing in order to contact the doped Si. The ARC removal was either done by laser ablation or by wet chemical etching, all followed by a plating step after inkjet‐printing, and will not be discussed in detail as the extra patterning steps make them rather unsuitable for industrial level solar cell fabrication.…”

Section: Metallizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inkjet Technology for Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaics

et al. 2014

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The world's ever increasing demand for energy necessitates technologies that generate electricity from inexhaustible and easily accessible energy sources. Silicon photovoltaics is a technology that can harvest the energy of sunlight. Its great characteristics have fueled research and development activities in this exciting field for many years now. One of the most important activities in the solar cell community is the investigation of alternative fabrication and structuring technologies, ideally serving both of the two main goals: device optimization and reduction of fabrication costs. Inkjet technology is practically evaluated along the whole process chain. Research activities cover many processes, such as surface texturing, emitter formation, or metallization. Furthermore, the inkjet technology itself is manifold as well. It can be used to apply inks that serve as a functional structure, present in the final device, as mask for subsequent structuring steps, or even serve as a reactant source to activate chemical etch reactions. This article reviews investigations of inkjet-printing in the field of silicon photovoltaics. The focus is on the different inkjet processes for individual fabrication steps of a solar cell. A technological overview and suggestions about where future work will be focused on are also provided. The great variety of the investigated processes highlights the ability of the inkjet technology to find its way into many other areas of functional printing and printed electronics.

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“…However, printing also has several notable advantages. Inkjet printing enables cost efficient mass manufacturing of electrodes and other functional materials on large substrates, such as plastic [ 14 ], paper [ 15 ], fabrics [ 16 ] or silicon [ 17 ] with a broad area of application. Elimination of lithography means that major equipment become redundant (mask aligner, photoresist spinner) and chemicals like photoresist and developer are not needed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-Lithographic Silicon Micromachining Using Inkjet and Chemical Etching

et al. 2016

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We introduce a non-lithographical and vacuum-free method to pattern silicon. The method combines inkjet printing and metal assisted chemical etching (MaCE); we call this method “INKMAC”. A commercial silver ink is printed on top of a silicon surface to create the catalytic patterns for MaCE. The MaCE process leaves behind a set of silicon nanowires in the shape of the inkjet printed micrometer scale pattern. We further show how a potassium hydroxide (KOH) wet etching process can be used to rapidly etch away the nanowires, producing fully opened cavities and channels in the shape of the original printed pattern. We show how the printed lines (width 50–100 µm) can be etched into functional silicon microfluidic channels with different depths (10–40 µm) with aspect ratios close to one. We also used individual droplets (minimum diameter 30 µm) to produce cavities with a depth of 60 µm and an aspect ratio of two. Further, we discuss using the structured silicon substrate as a template for polymer replication to produce superhydrophobic surfaces.

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Inkjet Printing for Silicon Solar Cells

Cited by 10 publications

References 5 publications

Inkjet printing of conductive materials: a review

Inkjet printing of conductive materials: a review

Inkjet Technology for Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaics

Non-Lithographic Silicon Micromachining Using Inkjet and Chemical Etching

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