Frequency Dependence on Etching Characteristics of Silicon using Surface Discharge Plasma

Abstract

We proposed a maskless plasma etching technique for fabrication of front contact grooves on a single crystalline silicon solar cell. In this paper, we evaluated characteristics of silicon etching with various output frequency of ac power source. The etching rate in the direction of the groove width was suppressed while that in the direction of the groove depth increased with increasing output frequency of the power source. Thus, it was found that the increase of output frequency of a power source was effective in the case where the surface discharge plasma was applied to patterning.