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Screen printable copper pastes for silicon solar cells

Journal Article · · Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [3];  [3]
  1. University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC (United States); Bert Thin Films LLC
  2. University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC (United States)
  3. Bert Thin Films LLC, Louisville, KY (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations
The current work demonstrates the successful metallization of a PERC silicon solar cell with screen-printable copper (Cu) paste that is sintered at elevated temperature in air atmosphere. The existing state of the art in Silicon (Si) solar cell metallization is silver (Ag) paste; Cu cost is 1/100th the cost of Ag and has a comparable conductivity. However, Cu undergoes rapid oxidation at elevated temperatures and the high diffusion of Cu into Si restricts its usage in the metallization of silicon solar cells. In this paper, a Cu paste containing a proprietary mixture of antioxidant additives and diffusion inhibitors was used to make front gridlines on PERC cells. The Cu-printed cells were fired in an IR belt furnace with a peak temperature of 576°C in air atmosphere. The solar cells discussed here reached an efficiency of 19%, which is 88% of the efficiency measured for a commercial Ag-printed cell. The working devices were further characterized using STEM, EDX, ToF-SIMS and long-term suns-Voc studies demonstrating an absence of Cu diffusion. Furthermore, thermally stressing the Cu-printed solar cells yielded a reduction of less than 1.9% of the initial pseudo fill factor (pFF) after 1000 hours at 200°C. Here, the shunt resistance of cells monitored over 3 years remained within 2.5% of its initial value, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the Cu diffusion barrier.
Research Organization:
Bert Thin Films LLC, Louisville, KY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
Grant/Contract Number:
EE0009638
OSTI ID:
2282892
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 2369967
Journal Information:
Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, Journal Name: Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells Vol. 265; ISSN 0927-0248
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (8)

Electrode metallization for scaled perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells: Challenges and opportunities
  • Rehman, Atteq ur; Van Kerschaver, Emmanuel P.; Aydin, Erkan
  • Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, Vol. 31, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1002/pip.3499
journal October 2021
Brief review of oxidation kinetics of copper at 350 °C to 1050 °C journal April 2006
A low cost metallization scheme for double sided buried contact silicon solar cells journal January 1994
Metallization of N-Type Silicon Solar Cells Using fine line Printing Techniques journal January 2011
Pathway to low-cost metallization of silicon solar cell through understanding of the silicon metal interface and plating chemistry journal May 2014
Physics of Copper in Silicon journal January 2002
The Oxidation of Copper in Air at Temperatures up to 100 °C journal October 2021
Review of the Potential of the Ni/Cu Plating Technique for Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells journal February 2014

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14 SOLAR ENERGY
Atmospheric sintering
Copper
Ideality factor
Metallization
Screen printing
Silver
Solar cells
Solar energy