We developed a maskless plasma texturing technique for multicrystalline Si (mc-Si) cells using Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) that results in higher cell performance than that of standard untextured cells. Elimination of plasma damage has been achieved while keeping front reflectance to low levels. Internal quantum efficiencies higher than those on planar and wet-textured cells have been obtained, boosting cell currents and efficiencies by up to 6% on tricrystalline Si cells.

Issue Section:
Technical Papers
Keywords:
solar cells, surface texture, sputter etching, plasma materials processing, silicon, elemental semiconductors, Multicrystalline Silicon, Plasma-Texturization, Reactive Ion Etching, Reflectance Control
Topics:
Reactive-ion etching, Reflectance, Silicon, Solar cells, Solar energy, Texture (Materials)
1.
Inomata
,
Y.
,
Fukui
,
K.
,
Shirasawa
,
K.
,
1997
, “
Surface Texturing of Large Area Multicrystalline Si Solar Cells Using Reactive Ion Etching Method
,”
Solar Energy Mat. Solar Cells
,
48, Part II
, pp.
237
–
242
.
2.
Ruby, D. S., Zaidi, S. H., and Narayanan, S., 2000, “Plasma-Texturization for Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cells,” Twenty-Eighth IEEE PVSC, pp. 75–78.
3.
Ruby, D. S., Zaidi, S. H., Damiani, B. M., and Rohatgi, A., 2001, “RIE-Texturing of Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cells,” PVSEC-12, Jeju, Korea, pp. 273–274.
4.
Basore, P. A., 1993 “Extended spectral analysis of IQE,” 23rd IEEE PV Specialists Conf., Louisville, pp. 147–152.
Copyright © 2005
 by ASME
You do not currently have access to this content.