A Grain Orientation-Independent Single-Step Saw Damage Gettering/Wet texturing Process for Efficient Silicon Solar Cells

Improving electrical and optical properties is important in manufacturing high-efficiency solar cells. Previous studies focused on individual gettering and texturing methods to improve solar cell material quality and reduce reflection loss, respectively. This study presents a novel method called saw damage gettering with texturing that effectively combines both methods for multicrystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafers manufactured using the diamond wire sawing (DWS) method. Although mc-Si is not the Si material currently used in photovoltaic products, the applicability of this method using the mc-Si wafers as it contains all grain orientations is demonstrated. It utilizes saw damage sites on the wafer surfaces for gettering metal impurities during annealing. Additionally, it can crystallize amorphous silicon on wafer surfaces generated during the sawing process to allow conventional acid-based wet texturing. This texturing method and annealing for 10 min allow for the removal of metal impurities and effectively forms a textured DWS Si wafer. The results show that the open-circuit voltage (Delta V-oc = +29 mV), short-circuit current density (Delta J(sc) = +2.5 mA cm(-2)), and efficiency (Delta eta = +2.1%) improved in the p-type passivated emitter and rear cells (p-PERC) manufactured using this novel method, as compared to those in the reference solar cells.

Automated summary

Improving electrical and optical properties is vital in the manufacturing of high-efficiency solar cells. This study introduces a novel method called saw damage gettering with texturing that combines the benefits of individual gettering and texturing techniques for multicrystalline silicon wafers. The results demonstrate that this method effectively improves the performance of solar cells and could be applicable for future use.