Fabrication and characterization of monocrystalline-like silicon solar cells

Abstract

Due to the necessity of associating high-purity monocrystalline silicon and lower-cost multicrystalline silicon wafers, the monocrystalline-like silicon technique is used as a promising method for solar-cell fabrication. The grain orientation of this material is composed of both 〈111〉 and 〈100〉 orientations. As a result of a combination for properties on the basis of two types of materials, silicon surface texturing was carried out by using alkaline (NaOH) chemical and reactive ion etching (RIE) texturing. In this research, we investigated the optical and the electrical properties of silicon surfaces prepared by using different texturing processes. By using the alkaline and RIE texturing processes, we obtained a fill factor of 78.6% with a conversion efficiency of 17.2% for a monocrystalline-like silicon wafer with an active surface area of 243 cm². Compared to alkaline texturing, this conversion efficiency shows an increase of 0.5%. Thus, large-area monocrystalline-like silicon solar cells with high efficiency and low cost can be fabricated.