Application of the inkjet-honeycomb-texture in silicon solar cell production

In this work a honeycomb texture (HC-texture), which is created by isotropic wet chemical under-etching of an inkjetted mask, was successfully applied to Floatzone silicon (FZ-Si) wafers with a diameter of 150 mm. A nearly perfect HC-texture with 18.2 % reflection after texturization was obtained despite printing irregularities in the masking step. Lifetime measurements after emitter diffusion and anti-reflection coating show that the HC-texture is also better passivated than of the 25.8 % reflecting acidic texture that was used in the reference group. An overall efficiency gain of 0.6 % might be deduced when using a HC-texture instead of the acidic texture. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the SiliconPV 2012 conference.