Optimization of Rear Point Contact Geometry by Means of 3-D Numerical Simulation

In this work three-dimensional (3-D) numerical simulations, validated by the experimental measurements of a reference cell, have been performed to optimize the rear contact geometry of a PERC-type solar cell, featuring a high sheet resistance (140 Omega/sq) phosphorus-doped emitter and a front-side metallization with narrow and highly-conductive electro-plated copper lines (40 mu m wide) on lowly resistive Ti contacts. The simulation results show that an optimization of the rear point contact design potentially leads to an efficiency improvement of 0.68%(abs) compared to the reference cell. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the SiliconPV 2012 conference.