• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.319.1-319.1
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• 2016

Recently, the Al-doped ZnO (ZnO:Al) films are intensively used in thin film a-Si solar cell applications due to their high transmittance and good conductivity. The textured ZnO:Al films are used to enhance the light trapping in thin film solar cells. The wet etch process is used to texture ZnO:Al films by dipping in diluted acidic solutions like HCl or HF. During that process the glass substrate could be damaged by the acidic solution and it may be difficult to apply it for the inline mass production process since it has to be done outside the chamber. In this paper we report a new technique to control the surface morphology of RF-sputtered ZnO:Al films. The ZnO:Al films are textured with vaporized HF formed by the mixture of HF and H2SiO3 solution. Even though the surface of textured ZnO:Al films by vapor etching process showed smaller and sharper surface structures compared to that of the films textured by wet etching, the haze value was dramatically improved. We achieved the high haze value of 78% at the wavelength of 540 nm by increasing etching time and HF concentration. The haze value of about 58% was achieved at the wavelength of 800 nm when vapor texturing was used. The ZnO:Al film texture by HCl had haze ratio of about 9.5 % at 800 nm and less than 40 % at 540 nm. In addition to low haze ratio, the texturing by HCl was very difficult to control etching and to keep reproducibility due to its very fast etching speed.

• 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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• 2004.11a
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• pp.280-284
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• 2004

Multicrystalline silicon wafers were textured in an alkaline bath, basically using sodium hydroxide and in acidic bath, using mainly hydrofluoric acid (HF), nitric acid $(HNO_3)$ and de-ionized water (DIW). Some wafers were also acid polished for the comparative study. Comparison of average reflectance of the samples treated with the new recipe of acidic solution showed average diffuse reflectance less than even 5 percent in the optimized condition. Solar cells were thus fabricated with the samples following the main steps such as phosphorus doping for emitter layer formation, silicon nitride deposition for anti-reflection coating by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and front surface passivation, screen printing metallization, co-firing in rapid thermal processing (RTP) Furnace and laser edge isolation and confirmed >14 % conversion efficiency from the best textured samples. This isotropic texturing approach can be instrumental to achieve high efficiency in mass production using relatively low cost silicon wafers as starting material.