Industrial 6 Inch Multicrystalline Silicon Solar Cells Fabricated Using Reactive Ion Etching with Efficiency Exceeding 18%

Abstract

To obtain a lower reflectance, we applied a maskless plasma texturing technique by reactive ion etching (RIE) to acid-textured multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafer. RIE texturing produced a deep and narrow textured surface with an excellent low reflectance. Owing to plasma-induced damage, unless the RIE-textured surface is subjected to proper damage removal etching (DRE), it shows drops in open circuit voltage (Voc) and fill factor (FF). RIE-textured samples with proper DRE showed sufficiently higher short circuit current (Isc) than acid-textured samples without a drop in Voc. In this study, we applied RIE texturing under optimized DRE condition to the selective emitter structure. In comparison with the acid-textured solar cells, RIE-textured solar cells have absolute gains in Isc above 200 mA. We successfully fabricated a 6-in. mc-Si solar cell with a conversion efficiency exceeding 18% by applying selective emitter technology with RIE texturing.