Reactive ion etching (RIE) as a method for texturing polycrystalline silicon solar cells

Amorphous Silicon / Crystalline Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells

“…In the mechanical texturing processes [60,61], trenches are milled into the substrate. The usual choice in industry is the reactive ion etching (RIE) process [62][63][64][65][66]. As the mechanical texturing process is independent of the crystal direction of the silicon substrate, textured substrates can be made also on polycrystalline silicon.…”

Study of metal assisted anisotropic chemical etching of silicon for high aspect ratio in crystalline silicon solar cells

“…The textured surface morphologies are used to enhance the light absorbing capability of silicon solar cells by improved light scattering and lower reflectance [1][2][3][4][5]. The textured surface structures increased the light absorption and the short circuit current density (J sc ) of solar cells [1,20,21].…”

“…Various texturing techniques like wet chemical etching, mechanical grooving, laser sculpturing and plasma etching have been used to texture the crystalline silicon (c-Si) and glass substrates. The wet chemical etching is preferred due to the low cost and less experimental process steps [2]. If the etching reaction is same in any direction then the etching is known as isotropic etching, whereas anisotropic etching is to remove the material in specific directions to get often flat and intricate shapes.…”

Simulation and characterization of performance of thin-film silicon solar cells with subwavelength nanoporous emitter profiles

“…While dry etching using the reactive ion etching (RIE) process [4,5] is the most widely used technology, it is too expensive for solar cells. Wet etching [6], using an aqueous alkaline solution, is cheaper, but its use is limited to c-Si and it is not suitable for multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) since the mc-Si grains have different orientations, unlike the c-Si grains. Metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE) and perpendicular direction etching can be applied to c-Si and mc-Si to obtain nanoporous structures to show the light trapping effect and increase the optical path through multiple reflections [7][8][9][10][11][12].…”