Impact of Rear-Surface Passivation on MWT Performances

Back-contact metal-wrap-through (MWT) solar cells are very attractive for implementation into industrial production lines. They combine the advantages of back-contact cells and the potential of easy integration into the production lines of standard cells. Nonetheless, they tend to show lower fill factors and open-circuit voltages than conventional cells. This is attributed to a non-linear shunt behavior under the emitter busbars and is believed to arise from a too-deep penetration of the silver paste printed on the emitter region on the rear during the firing step. In order to improve the MWT solar cells performances, we propose to deposit on the rear-surface a full coverage layer of a dielectric material. This layer is used first to protect the emitter during the firing step; but if it is smartly chosen, it can also be used as passivating layer for the base surface. In this work, we have processed 12.5times12.5 cm² mc-Si wafers into 220-mum-thick MWT cells, including the deposition of a passivating dielectric layer on the rear surface. By means of dark lock-in thermography measurements, we observe that the shunting effect in the resulting cells is greatly reduced compared to neighboring cells processed into MWT with an Al-BSF rear-surface passivation. The dielectric plays in addition its role of surface passivation, according to the nearly 7 mV increase observed on the open-circuit voltage even on thick wafers. We also observe a 1.4% FF absolute increase, resulting in a 0.6% absolute efficiency increase