Abstract
Texturization is a useful method to enhance the optical absorption of monocrystalline silicon wafers by light‐trapping effect in solar cell processing. In present study, a series of textured wafers with various pyramid sizes ranging from 200 nm to 10 μm were fabricated by modified wet‐chemical method and characterized. The results show that there is little difference in the reflectance with the pyramid sizes from 1 to 10 μm, which is consistent with the ray‐tracing simulation results. However, the light‐trapping function of the 200 nm sample below the geometrical optics limit is much weaker. The solar cells fabricated from the 1 μm samples own the highest power conversion efficiency of 18.17% due to a better coverage of metal finger lines than the larger ones, and the 200 nm samples have the lowest efficiency of 10.53%.
Highlights
The demand for utilizing solar energy has significantly increased in the past few years
Anisotropic etching on (100)-oriented monocrystalline silicon wafers to form square-based pyramid units randomly distributed over the surface using alkaline solution has been proved to be an important and effective way to reduce the reflectivity from the front surface of silicon solar cells and improve the efficiency [3, 4]
Nishimoto and Vallejo textured silicon wafers by using sodium carbonate solution without adding isopropyl alcohol (IPA) [10, 11], and the resultant pyramid size was in the range of 4–7 μm
Summary
The demand for utilizing solar energy has significantly increased in the past few years. Anisotropic etching on (100)-oriented monocrystalline silicon wafers to form square-based pyramid units randomly distributed over the surface using alkaline solution has been proved to be an important and effective way to reduce the reflectivity from the front surface of silicon solar cells and improve the efficiency [3, 4]. Nishimoto and Vallejo textured silicon wafers by using sodium carbonate solution without adding IPA [10, 11], and the resultant pyramid size was in the range of 4–7 μm. As we mentioned above, textured silicon wafers with different pyramid size can only be synthesized using separate method. Solar cells made from different textured wafers were fabricated, and a power conversion efficiency of 18.17% was achieved under optimized conditions
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