Ultrafast laser processing of silicon for photovoltaics

Abstract

The photovoltaics market has been growing rapidly in the past decade or so, driven by policy support, growing economies of scale, and technological improvements. Continued advances in photovoltaics manufacturing and technologies may drive further cost reductions and facilitate market growth going forward. Here, we review one such potential advance: the use of ultrafast laser processing in silicon photovoltaic production. We provide an overview of the current major capabilities of ultrafast laser processing of silicon, including texturing, hyperdoping, and combined texturing and hyperdoping. We describe each process, survey recent advances, compare to alternative methods, and report the state-of-the-art of each process in relation to photovoltaic devices. We also discuss the major challenges facing each process. We close with a prospectus for research and applications. We conclude that there are no major technical obstacles to the application of ultrafast laser texturing to photovoltaics manufacturing currently, while ultrafast laser hyperdoping requires further research and development before adoption. We also show that the use of hyperdoping for intermediate band silicon photovoltaics likely requires concurrent surface texturing or other absorptionenhancement techniques to yield photoconversion efficiency improvements.

Influences of Initial Surface Conditions on Response Characteristics of Amorphous Silicon Films to Nanosecond Laser Irradiation

“…It is assumed that the altered depth of the molten material between adjacent tracks led to a change in the height of the protrusion structures. Compared with other studies [ 33 , 34 ], we created micron-height regular micro-protrusions owing to the utilization of an ideal surface roughness. This is completely different from the two-dimensional nanodot structures produced on a stainless steel surface by cross-scanning the laser beam [ 35 ].…”

Significantly enhanced electrocatalytic activity of copper for hydrogen evolution reaction through femtosecond laser blackening

“…Laser processing is a viable technique for the creation of various microstructures to alter the optical [ 27 ], mechanical [ 28 ], and electrical [ 29 ] properties of materials such as aluminum [ 30 ], silicon [ 31 ], titanium [ 32 ], and gold [ 33 ] for a wide variety of applications in photonics, plasmonic and energy fields [ 34 ]. Compared to chemical etching and plasma ablating, femtosecond (fs) laser processing has higher accuracy, efficiency, controllability as well as repeatability, and can introduce microstructures on materials with higher physical stability.…”

Direct Femtosecond Laser Fabrication of Chemically Functionalized Ultra-Black Textures on Silicon for Sensing Applications

“…For example, functionalization of silicon can proceed either via binding alkoxysilanes to terminal silanol groups of native oxide layer [14], or through the addition of unsaturated hydrocarbons [14,15] and carbonyl compounds [14] to hydrogen-terminated surface. Physical methods include the formation of a certain surface morphology or local modification of chemical composition via doping, implantation or nanopore incorporation [16][17][18]. Among these physical methods, direct laser processing of a silicon surface with nano-and femtosecond (fs) laser pulses is an innovative, convenient, green and high-performing technology for the fabrication of surfaces with various morphologies [18][19][20][21].…”

“…Physical methods include the formation of a certain surface morphology or local modification of chemical composition via doping, implantation or nanopore incorporation [16][17][18]. Among these physical methods, direct laser processing of a silicon surface with nano-and femtosecond (fs) laser pulses is an innovative, convenient, green and high-performing technology for the fabrication of surfaces with various morphologies [18][19][20][21]. In particular, liquid-assisted pulsed laser processing of Si was shown to enable large-scale fabrication of homogeneous nanotextured surfaces exhibiting feature size around 100 nm, i.e., well below the optical diffraction limit [22].…”