Improved performance of self-aligned, selective-emitter silicon solar cells
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Solarex, Frederick, MD (United States)
The authors improved a self-aligned emitter etchback technique that requires only a single emitter diffusion and no alignment 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. They 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. They obtained an improvement of almost a full percentage point in cell efficiency when the self-aligned emitter etchback was combined with an optimized 3-step PECVD-nitride surface passivation and hydrogenation treatment. They also investigated the inclusion of a plasma-etching process that results in a low-reflectance, textured surface on multicrystalline silicon cells. Preliminary results indicate reflectance can be significantly reduced without etching away the emitter diffusion.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Financial Management and Controller, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 663596
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-98-1761C; CONF-980735-; ON: DE98003867; BR: YN0100000; TRN: AHC29818%%434
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2. world conference and exhibition on photovoltaic solar energy conversion, Vienna (Austria), 6-10 Jul 1998; Other Information: PBD: [1998]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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