Recent progress on the self-aligned, selective-emitter silicon solar cell
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Solarex, Frederick, MD (United States); and others
We developed a self-aligned emitter etchback technique that requires only a single emitter diffusion and no alignments to form self-aligned, patterned-emitter profiles. Standard commercial, screen-printed gridlines mask a plasma-etchback of the emitter. A subsequent PECVD-nitride deposition provides good surface and bulk passivation and an antireflection coating. We succeeded in finding a set of parameters which resulted in good emitter uniformity and improved cell performance. We used full-size multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) cells processed in a commercial production line and performed a statistically designed, multiparameter experiment to optimize the use of a hydrogenation treatment to increase performance. Our initial results found a statistically significant improvement of half an absolute percentage point in cell efficiency when the self-aligned emitter etchback was combined with a 3-step PECVD-nitride surface passivation and hydrogenation treatment. 12 refs., 4 figs., 3 tabs.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Financial Management and Controller, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 538050
- Report Number(s):
- SAND--97-2462C; CONF-970953--; ON: DE98000398
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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