Analyzing impact of background plating from alkaline Ni bath for Ni-Cu metallization

Ni-Cu based front contacts for c-Si cells are plated on patterned SiN_x and there could be undesirable background plating leading to shading and shunting losses. In this work, background plating from an alkaline Ni bath is analyzed by Suns-V_oc and CoreScan studies. It has been observed that for plating interval of two minutes, pseudo fill-factor show variations till 67% and average R_sh value was less than half of unprocessed cells. Decrease in R_sh for plating interval of one minute was not as severe as for two minute plating.