The effect of rear side etching for crystalline Si solar cells

후면식각이 결정질 실리콘 태양전지에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

Nowadays, the crystalline Si Solar cell are expected for economical renewable energy source. The cost of the crystalline Si solar cell are decreasing by improvement of its efficiency and decrease of the cost of the raw Si wafers for Solar cells. This Si wafer based crystalline Si solar cell is the verified technology from several decade of its history. Now, I will introduce one method that can be upgrade the efficiency by using simple and economical method. The name of this method is Rear Side Etching(RSE). The purpose of rear side etching is the elimination of n+ layer of rear side and increase of the flatness. The effects of rear side etching are the improvement of Voc and increase of efficiency by reducement series resistance and forming of uniform BSF. The experimental procedure for rear side etching is very simple. After anti-reflection coating on solar cell wafer, Solar cell wafer is etched by the etching chemical that react with only rear side not front side. This special chemical is no harmful to anti-reflection coating layer. It can only etched rear side of solar cell wafer. We can use etching image by optical microscope, minority carrier life time by WCT 120, SiNx thickness and refractive index by ellipsometer, cell efficiency for the RSE effect measurement. The key point of rear side etching is development of etching process condition that react with only rear side. If we can control this factor, we can achieve increase of solar cell efficiency very economically without new device.