Industrially attractive front contact formation methods for mechanically V-textured multicrystalline silicon solar cells

The formation of the front contact is one major topic for solar cell industry. In addition, for multicrystalline silicon (mc Si) there has been no breakthrough in establishing an efficient and cost effective surface texturisation technology for considerable front surface reflection reduction yet. This paper gives an overview on the integration of the V-texturisation into industrial solar cell processes applying the following economical attractive metallisation methods: screen-printing, roller-printing and buried contact formation. For these metallisation methods cell efficiencies of 16.0–16.3% on BAYSIX mc Si (area 100–156 cm2) have been reached with 4–7% rel. efficiency increase as compared to untextured reference cells. In addition solar cell simulations based on realistic assumptions for the contact geometry and electrical performance are given. Finally, a comparison between solar cell concepts with homogeneous and selective emitter including a mechanical V-texture is presented.