Investigation of Ni/Cu Contact for Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells

결정질 실리콘 태양전지에 적용하기 위한 도금법으로 형성환 Ni/Cu 전극에 관한 연구

An evaporated Ti/Pd/Ag contact system is most widely used to make high-efficiency silicon solar cells, however, the system is not cost effective due to expensive materials and vacuum techniques. Commercial solar cells with screen-printed contacts formed by using Ag paste suffer from a low fill factor and a high shading loss because of high contact resistance and low aspect ratio. Low-cost Ni and Cu metal contacts have been formed by using electroless plating and electroplating techniques to replace the Ti/Pd/Ag and screen-printed Ag contacts. Ni/Cu alloy is plated on a silicon substrate by electro-deposition of the alloy from an acetate electrolyte solution, and nickel-silicide formation at the interface between the silicon and the nickel enhances stability and reduces the contact resistance. It was, therefore, found that nickel-silicide was suitable for high-efficiency solar cell applications. The Ni contact was formed on the front grid pattern by electroless plating followed by anneal ing at $380{\sim}400^{\circ}C$ for $15{\sim}30$ min at $N_{2}$ gas to allow formation of a nickel-silicide in a tube furnace or a rapid thermal processing(RTP) chamber because nickel is transformed to NiSi at $380{\sim}400^{\circ}C$. The Ni plating solution is composed of a mixture of $NiCl_{2}$ as a main nickel source. Cu was electroplated on the Ni layer by using a light induced plating method. The Cu electroplating solution was made up of a commercially available acid sulfate bath and additives to reduce the stress of the copper layer. The Ni/Cu contact was found to be well suited for high-efficiency solar cells and was successfully formed by using electroless plating and electroplating, which are more cost effective than vacuum evaporation. In this paper, we investigated low-cost Ni/Cu contact formation by electroless and electroplating for crystalline silicon solar cells.