DocumentCode :
3525950
Title :
Formation of very low resistance contact for silicon photovoltaic cells
Author :
Xu, Baomin ; Limb, Scott ; Rodkin, Alexandra ; Shrader, Eric ; Garner, Sean
Author_Institution :
Palo Alto Res. Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA
fYear :
2012
fDate :
3-8 June 2012
Abstract :
A number of approaches have been developed in order to introduce a nickel-based contact layer between the silver electrode and n+ emitter layer, which can substantially reduce the specific contact resistance. One of them is to use a blanket sputtered nickel film as the contact layer and screen printed silver lines as an etch mask to pattern the underlying nickel film. This approach ensures the use of high quality nickel film as a contact layer to reduce the specific contact resistance, and also avoids the use of standard photolithographic process to reduce the cost. The result shows the specific contact resistance with this approach can be reduced by about two orders of magnitude compared to only using screen printed silver gridlines. The second approach is to use inkjet printed nickel nanoparticle inks instead of the sputtered nickel film to form the contact layer, enabling a very low cost inline process that can be easily implemented into current solar cell production line. The PC1D modeling result shows that the absolute efficiency of solar cells can be increased by up to 0.9% with the substantial reduction on contact resistance.
Keywords :
electrochemical electrodes; elemental semiconductors; silicon; silver; solar cells; PC1D modeling; Si; blanket sputtered nickel film; cost reduction; high quality nickel film; inkjet printed nickel nanoparticle inks; inline process; n+ emitter layer; nickel-based contact layer; screen printed silver gridlines; silicon photovoltaic cells; silver electrode; solar cell production line; standard photolithographic process; very low resistance contact formation; Films; Nickel; Resistance; Silicides; Silicon; Silver; Substrates; contact resistance; metallization; nickel silicide; photovoltaic cells; silicon;
fLanguage :
English
Publisher :
ieee
Conference_Titel :
Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2012 38th IEEE
Conference_Location :
Austin, TX
ISSN :
0160-8371
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-0064-3
Type :
conf
DOI :
10.1109/PVSC.2012.6318291
Filename :
6318291
Link To Document :
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