Fabrication and characterization of silicon solar cells towards improvement of power efficiency

Abstract

In recent years, natural energy has been increasingly popular as a source of electricity. Silicon-based solar cell devices are employed to harvest the natural energy, which uses the photovoltaic effect to convert sunlight into an electromotive force. Texturing was usually done on the solar cell surface using a variety of ways to improve solar cell efficiency. In this work, an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) texturing approach has been adopted. This research also examines the fabrication of crystalline silicon solar cells with and without texturing and characterizes them to quantify the efficiency improvement. All the characterization is performed inside a clean room to support efficient results.