Title :
Isotropic plasma texturing of mc-Si for industrial solar cell fabrication
Author :
Rentsch, Jochen ; Kohn, Norbert ; Bamberg, Frederick ; Roth, Kristin ; Peters, Stefan ; Ludemann, R. ; Preu, Ralf
Author_Institution :
Fraunhofer-Inst. fur Solare Energiesysteme, Freiburg, Germany
Abstract :
Plasma texturing has been an active area of research for many years mainly focusing on the optimization of the surface morphology to reduce overall reflection losses. Most of these studies have been carried out on laboratory-type etching systems suitable for single wafer treatment. Within this work, plasma texturing of multicrystalline (mc) silicon for industrial application with a dynamic plasma etching system is presented. For an evaluation of achievable surface morphologies, the influence of the oxygen content of a SF6/O2 etch gas mixture has been investigated. With an optimized process, the created surface textures result in weighted reflectance values on mc-Si below 15%. First cell results show significantly higher short circuit currents and approximately 3% relative higher conversion efficiencies compared to wet chemically etched non-textured standard industrial mc-Si solar cells.
Keywords :
elemental semiconductors; plasma materials processing; reflectivity; short-circuit currents; silicon; solar cells; sputter etching; surface morphology; surface texture; Si; conversion efficiencies; etch gas mixture; isotropic plasma texturing; plasma etching; reflection losses; short circuit currents; surface morphology; surface textures; wet chemically etched nontextured standard industrial solar cells; Chemical industry; Etching; Fabrication; Photovoltaic cells; Plasma applications; Reflection; Surface morphology; Surface texture; Surface treatment; Textile industry;
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2005. Conference Record of the Thirty-first IEEE
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-8707-4
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.2005.1488383
