Fabrication of Electrode Groove on Silicon Solar Cell using High-Pressure Surface Discharge

Abstract

We proposed a low-cost plasma process technique to fabricate narrower front electrode grooves on a single crystalline silicon solar cell, in which the surface discharge operated at high-pressure etched the silicon nitride film of 150 nm thickness on a silicon layer. The results showed that the surface discharge could effectively etch the silicon nitride film in a short time and that a high etching rate more than 3000 nm/min was obtained. The narrow and uniform grooves with the width of less than 70 μm were obtained when the pressure in a chamber, the back electrode length and the etching time were 152 kPa, 2 mm and 10 s, respectively. The narrower electrode groove could be obtained when the back electrode length was short and the pressure was high.