Abstract
In this work, solar cells fabricated from 100% upgraded metallurgical grade (UMG) silicon refined by a novel metallurgical route have been investigated. Compared with Siemens mc-Si solar cells, the UMG mc-Si solar cells fabricated in the same process present higher open voltages and fill factors, together with low initial light-induced degradation due to the material properties. By secondary ion mass spectroscopy measurements, the UMG mc-Si solar cells show shallower and better single-side abrupt junctions, resulting in higher photoelectric conversion in the wave band from 400 nm to 750 nm as external quantum efficiency measurements demonstrated. Although higher impurity content limits the minority carrier diffusion length, leading to lower shot-circuit current density, the average efficiency of the UMG-Si solar cells fabricated in standard production line is up to 16.55%, close to 16.69% of the reference solar cells. Furthermore, by an additional phosphorous gettering process, the mean efficiency of the UMG-Si solar cells increases to 16.68%, and the reverse characteristics of the corresponding cells have been significantly improved.
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