Near 13% Efficiency Shunt Free Solar Cells on RGS Wafers

Abstract

Direct casting of silicon into wafers allows to produce wafers much more cheaply than in traditional block casting methods. RGS (ribbon growth on substrate) is such a method. In order for RGS to be cost effective sufficient cell efficiencies must be realized. In this paper we present a 12.9% efficient screen printed RGS cell. This is an increase of 0.6% absolute compared to the best previous result reported in January 2005. The increase was achieved by reducing shunting in cells made on RGS material