[17a-D101-1~8] 16.3 Bulk, thin-film and other silicon-based solar cells

▲ [17a-D101-4] Texture Size Control by Adding Glass Micro-Particles into an Alkaline Solution Used for Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

〇(P)Cong Thanh Nguyen¹, Koichi Koyama¹, Huynh Thi Cam Tu¹, Keisuke Ohdaira¹, Hideki Matsumura¹ (1.Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST))

Keywords:texture size control, micro-particle assisted texturing (MPAT) process, glass micro-particles

During preparation of textured crystalline silicon (c-Si) for solar cells, we discovered that by mixing low-cost glass micro-particles with a conventional alkaline solution, the texture size drastically reduces from 10 µm or more to sub-micron (0.3−2 µm). We named this unique texture-forming process as micro-particle assisted texturing (MPAT) process. The MPAT process is applicable for c-Si substrates with thickness down to 50 µm. Process time and c-Si loss are also reduced from 25 to 2 min and from 20 to 2 µm, respectively. We investigated the effect of several kinds of the glass micro-particles in the texturing. We found a dependence of the texture size and the optical reflectivity on mixing ratio (or percentages by weight) (wt%) and diameters of the micro-particles. High-quality passivation showing the carrier lifetimes larger than several ms and effective anti-reflection coating (ARC) are possible on the new textures. We believe that the MPAT technique will make a progress in future solar cells using c-Si with a thickness less than 100 µm.