• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.99-103
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• 2008

To improve efficiency of solar cells, it is important to make a light trapping structure to reduce surface reflectance for increasing absorption of sun light within the solar cells. One of the promising methods that can reduce surface reflectance is isotropic texturing with acid solution based on hydrofluoric acid(HF), nitric acid($HNO_3$), and organic additives. Anisotropic texturing with alkali solution is not suitable for multicrystalline silicon wafers because of its different grain orientation. Isotropic texturing with acid solution can uniformly etch multicrystalline silicon wafers unrelated with grain orientation, so we can get low surface reflectance. In this paper, the acid texturing solution is made up of only HF and $HNO_3$ for easy controlling the concentration and low cost compared to acid solution with organic additives. $HNO_3$ concentration and dipping time were varied to find the condition of minimum surface reflectance. Textured surfaces were observed Scanning Electron Microscope(SEM) and surface reflectance were measured. The best result of arithmetic mean(wavelength from 400 nm to 1000 nm) reflectance with acid texturing is 4.64 % less than alkali texturing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.16-17
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• 2007

To improve efficiency of solar cells, it is important to make a light trapping structure to reduce surface reflectance for increasing absorption of sun light within the solar cells. One of the promising methods that can reduce surface reflectance is isotropic texturing with acid solution based on hydrofluoric acid(HF), nitric acid($HNO_3$), and organic additives. Anisotropic texturing with alkali solution is not suitable for multicrystalline silicon wafers because of its different grain orientation. Isotropic texturing with acid solution can uniformly etch multicrystalline silicon wafers unrelated with grain orientation, so we can get low surface reflectance. In this paper, the acid texturing solution is made up of only HF and $HNO_3$ for easy controling the concentration and low cost compared to acid solution with organic additives. $HNO_3$ concentration and dipping time were varied to find the condition of minimum surface reflectance. Textured surfaces were observed Scanning Electron Microscope(SEM) and surface reflectance were measured. The best result of arithmetic mean(wavelength from 400nm to 1000nm) reflectance with acid texturing is 4.64% less than alkali texturing.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.264-267
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• 2007

It is important to reduce optical losses from front surface reflection to improve the efficiency of crystalline silicon solar cells. Surface texturing by isotropic etching with acid solution based on HF and $HNO_3$ is one of the promising methods that can reduce surface reflectance. Anisotropic texturing with alkali solution is not suitable for multicrystalline silicon wafers because of its various grain orientations. In this paper, we textured multicrystalline silicon wafers by simple wet chemical etching using acid solution to reduce front surface reflectance. After that, surface morphology of textured wafer was observed by Scanning Electron Microscope(SEM) and Atomic Force Microscope(AFM), surface reflectance was measured in wavelength from 400nm to 1000nm. We obtained 29.29% surface reflectance by isotropic texturing with acid solution in wavelength from 400nm to 1000nm for fabrication of multicrystalline silicon solar cells.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.121-125
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• 2011

Ribbon silicon solar cells have been investigated because they can be produced with a lower material cost. However, it is very difficult to get good texturing with a conventional acid solution. To achieve high efficiency should be minimized for the reflectance properties. In this paper, acid vapor texturing and anti-reflection coating of $SiN_x$ was applied for EFG Ribbon Si Wafer. P-type ribbon silicon wafer had a thickness of 200 ${\mu}m$ and a resistivity of 3 $\Omega-cm$. Ribbon silicon wafers were exposed in an acid vapor. Acid vapor texturing was made by reaction between the silicon and the mixed solution of HF : $HNO_3$. After acid vapor texturing process, nanostructure of less than size of 1 ${\mu}m$ was formed and surface reflectance of 6.44% was achieved. Reflectance was decreased to 2.37% with anti-reflection coating of $SiN_x$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.19-20
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• 2006

Two methods that can reduce reflectance in solar cells are surface texturing and anti-reflection coating. Wet chemical etching is a typical method that surface texturing of multi-crystalline silicon. Wet chemical etching methods are the acid texturization of saw damage on the surface of multi-crystalline silicon or double-step chemical etching after KOH saw damage removal too. These methods of surface texturing are realized by chemical etching in acid solutions HF-$HNO_3$-$H_2O$. In this solutions we can reduce reflectance spectra by simple process etching of multi-crystalline silicon surface. We have obtained reflectance of 27.19% m 400~1100nm from acidic chemical etching after KOH saw damage removal. This result is about 7% less than just saw damage removal substrate. The surface morphology observed by microscope and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2018

Current major photovoltaic (PV) market share (> 60%) is being occupied by the multicrystalline (mc)-silicon solar cells despite of low efficiency compared to single crystalline silicon solar cells. The diamond wire sawing technology reduces the production cost of crystalline silicon solar cells, it increases the optical loss for the existing mc-silicon solar cells and hence its efficiency is low in the current mass production line. To overcome the optical loss in the mc-crystalline silicon, caused by the diamond wire sawing, next generation texturing process is being investigated by various research groups for the PV industry. In this review, the limitation of surface structure and optical loss due to the reflectivity of conventional mc-silicon solar cells are explained by the typical texturing mechanism. Various texturing technologies that could minimize the optical loss of mc-silicon solar cells are explained. Finally, next generation texturing technology to survive in the fierce cost competition of photovoltaic market is discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.58-61
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• 2012

In our report a relatively simple process for fast nano-texturing of p-type(100) CZ- silicon surface using silver catalyzed wet chemical etching in aqueous hydrofluoric acid (HF) and hydrogen peroxide solution($H_2O_2$) at room temperature. The wafers were saw-damaged by NaOH(6 wt%) at $60^{\circ}C$ for 150s. To obtain a nano-structured black surface, a thin layer of silver with thickness of 1 - 10 nm was deposited on the surfaces by evaporation system. After this process the samples were etched in HF : $H_2O_2$ : $H_2O$ = 1:5:10 at room temperature for 80s - 220s. Due to the local catalytic of the Ag clusters, this treatment results in the nano-scale texturing on the surface. This resulted in average reflectance values less than 9% after the silver on the surface of the wafers were removed.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.46 no.12
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• pp.835-840
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• 2008

Texturing for crystalline silicon solar cells is one of the important techniques to increase conversion efficiency by effective photon trapping. Generally, incoming wafers or alkali etched wafers are used for texturing. From this conventional etching process, $7{\sim}10{\mu}m$-sized random pyramids are formed. In this study, acid etching for removal of saw damages was practiced before texturing. This improved the resulting surface morphology, which consisted of $2{\sim}4{\mu}m$-sized pyramids. Because these pyramids covered the surface much more extensively, we obtained reduction of optical losses on the surface. In order to compare with conventional texturing, FE-SEM is used for observing surface morphology and reflectance data is analyzed by UV-VIS spectrophotometer.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.461-465
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• 2011

An aluminum doped zinc oxide (AZO) film for front contacts of thin film solar cells, in this work, were deposited by r.f. magnetron sputtering, and then etched in diluted hydrochloric acid solution for different times. Effects of surface texturing on the electro-optical properties of AZO films were investigated. Also, to clarify the light trapping of textured AZO film, amorphous silicon thin film solar cells were fabricated on the textured AZO/glass substrate and the performance of solar cells were studied. After texturing, the spectral haze at the visible range of 400 ~750 nm increased substantially with the etching time, without a change in the resistivity. The conversion efficiency of amorphous Si solar cells with textured AZO film as a front electrode was improved by the increase of short-circuit current density ($J_{sc}$), compared to cell with flat AZO films.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.419-419
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• 2016

High efficiency silicon solar cell requires the textured front surface to reduce reflectance and to improve the light trapping. In case of mono-crystalline silicon solar cell, wet etching with alkaline solution is widespread. However, the alkali texturing methods are ineffective in case of multi-crystalline silicon wafer due to grain boundary of random crystallographic orientation. The acid texturing method is generally used in multi-crystalline silicon wafer to reduce the surface reflectance. However the acid textured solar cell gives low short-circuit current due to high reflectivity while it improves the open-circuit voltage. To reduce the reflectivity of multi-crystalline silicon wafer, double texturing method with combination of acid and reactive ion etching is an attractive technical solution. In this paper, we have studied to optimize RIE experimental condition with change of RF power (100W, 150W, 200W, 250W, 300W). During experiment, the gas ratio of SF6 and O2 was fixed as 30:10.