Thin-film silicon solar cell development on imprint-textured glass substrates

In this work, we report on the fabrication of microcrystalline thin-film silicon solar cells on textured glass substrates. The development of transparent and conductive front contacts for these solar cells is presented. State-of-the-art random textures for light-trapping were replicated into a glass-like resist on glass substrates with an imprint process. We applied an industrial relevant soft polymer mold that gives excellent replication accuracy. The necessity of applying thin front contacts for enhanced incoupling of the incident light is shown. An increased series resistance of these thin front contacts caused a decrease of the fill factor of the solar cells. One way to surpass this decrease in fill factor by reducing the solar cell width is demonstrated. In addition, the light-trapping and the light-incoupling for solar cells deposited on three different types of random textures were compared.