Inexpensive transparent nanoelectrode for crystalline silicon solar cells

Qiang Peng,Bing Han,Jinwei Gao,Ke Pei,Ruopeng Li,Guofu Zhou,Jun-Ming Liu,Krzysztof Kempa

doi:10.1186/s11671-016-1533-3

Abstract

We report an easily manufacturable and inexpensive transparent conductive electrode for crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells. It is based on a silver nanoparticle network self-forming in the valleys between the pyramids of a textured solar cell surface, transformed into a nanowire network by sintering, and subsequently “buried” under the silicon surface by a metal-assisted chemical etching. We have successfully incorporated these steps into the conventional c-Si solar cell manufacturing process, from which we have eliminated the expensive screen printing and firing steps, typically used to make the macro-electrode of conducting silver fingers. The resulting, preliminary solar cell achieved power conversion efficiency only 14 % less than the conventionally processed c-Si control cell. We expect that a cell with an optimized processing will achieve at least efficiency of the conventional commercial cell, but at significantly reduced manufacturing cost.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11671-016-1533-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

Transparent conductive electrodes (TCE) are important components of photovoltaic and photonic devices, such as displays, light sources, detectors, and solar cells [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Most common TCE used today are based on doped metal oxides, such as indium tin oxide (ITO) [7, 8]
Metal nanowires have been shown to combine the optoelectronic advantages with the lowcost manufacturing, including the high-through put roll-toroll processing [10, 19]

Summary

Introduction

Transparent conductive electrodes (TCE) are important components of photovoltaic and photonic devices, such as displays, light sources, detectors, and solar cells [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Most common TCE used today are based on doped metal oxides, such as indium tin oxide (ITO) [7, 8]. Metal nanowires have been shown to combine the optoelectronic advantages with the lowcost manufacturing, including the high-through put roll-toroll processing [10, 19]. On transparent, low dielectric constant substrates, their optical [17] and/or photovoltaic [20] performance has been comparable, or better than that of the commonly used ITO.

Methods

Results

Conclusion