Effect of Various Wafer Surface Etching Processes on c-Si Solar Cell Characteristics

Abstract

In order to analyze the effects of various sizes of pyramid structure on solar cell characteristics, a pyramid structure was formed on the wafer through various etching processes. In this paper, etching was performed using one-step etching processes such as alkaline solution etching, reactive ion etching (RIE), and metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE), and two-step etching processes such as alkaline solution + MACE and alkaline solution + RIE. The micro-sized pyramid-structured wafers formed using the alkali solution showed higher reflectivity than nano-sized pyramid-structured wafers. Accordingly, it was expected that the characteristics of the cells fabricated with a nano-sized pyramid-structured wafer having low reflectivity would be higher than that of a micro-sized pyramid-structured wafer. However, it was confirmed that the quantum efficiency characteristics in the short wavelength region were higher in the micro-sized pyramid-structured wafers than in the nano-sized pyramid-structured wafers. To confirm the reason for this, surface characteristics were analyzed through the deposition of an emitter layer on a wafer formed in a pyramidal structure. As a result, in the case of the nano-sized pyramid-structured wafer, the sheet resistance characteristics were lower due to the increased depth of the emitter layer in comparison to the micro-sized pyramid-structured wafer. Accordingly, it was determined that the quantum efficiency was degraded as a result of the high recombination rate.

Keywords

• crystalline Silicon (c-Si) solar cell
• surface etching
• metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE)
• reactive ion etching (RIE)
• reflectance