The use of chemical vapor etching in multicrystalline silicon solar cells

Issue		Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. Volume 47, Number 1, July 2009 4th Colloquium Interdisciplinary in Instrumentation (C2I)


Article Number		10301
Number of page(s)		4
Section		Semiconductors and Devices
DOI		10.1051/epjap/2009085
Published online		07 May 2009

Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 47, 10301 (2009)
DOI: 10.1051/epjap/2009085

The use of chemical vapor etching in multicrystalline silicon solar cells

M. Ben Rabha, M.F. Boujmil, M. Saadoun and B. Bessaïs

Centre de Recherches et des Technologies de l'Énergie – Technopole de Borj-Cédria, Laboratoire de Nanomatériaux et des Systèmes pour l'Énergie, BP 95, 2050 Hammam-Lif, Tunisia

rabha2222@yahoo.fr

Received: 13 June 2008 / Received in final form: 20 October 2008 / Accepted: 7 March 2009 / Published online: 7 May 2009

Abstract
With the purpose to increase the light confinement and the efficiency of silicon solar cells, the reflection of the surface emitter needs to be minimized and the minority carrier collection improved. This improvement is currently achieved by the application of the chemical vapor etching (CVE) technique. In this paper, we investigate the effects of CVE on surface texturing and silicon grooving. CVE-based porous silicon (PS) was found to be a good antireflection and passivation layer for multicrystalline Si (mc-Si) solar cells. As a result, the reflectivity of the mc-Si solar cell decreases by about 60% of its initial value in the 650–950 nm spectral range and the internal quantum efficiency improves by 30% after PS application in the 400–700 nm spectral range. CVE can be used for surface texturing of single or mc-Si Si wafer leading to lower surface reflectivity and reduction of the dead layer. The chemical vapor etching techniques enabled realize buried metallic contacts by grooving mc-Si silicon wafers. The spectral response of mc-Si solar cells was found to enhance of about 12% in the long wavelength range when a rear buried metallic contacts is achieved, while a significant increase of about 35% was observed at short wavelengths (400–650 nm spectral range) subsequent front grid buried metallic contacts realization.

PACS
72.40.+w - Photoconduction and photovoltaic effects.
81.65.-b - Surface treatments.
85.30.-z - Semiconductor devices.
81.65.Rv - Passivation.

© EDP Sciences 2009

What is OpenURL?

The OpenURL standard is a protocol for transmission of metadata describing the resource that you wish to access. An OpenURL link contains article metadata and directs it to the OpenURL server of your choice. The OpenURL server can provide access to the resource and also offer complementary services (specific search engine, export of references...). The OpenURL link can be generated by different means.

If your librarian has set up your subscription with an OpenURL resolver, OpenURL links appear automatically on the abstract pages.
You can define your own OpenURL resolver with your EDPS Account. In this case your choice will be given priority over that of your library.
You can use an add-on for your browser (Firefox or I.E.) to display OpenURL links on a page (see http://www.openly.com/openurlref/). You should disable this module if you wish to use the OpenURL server that you or your library have defined.