• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.49 no.11
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• pp.905-909
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• 2011

The formation of front metal contact silicon solar cells is required for low cost, low contact resistance to silicon surfaces. One of the available front metal contacts is Ni/Cu plating, which can be mass produced via asimple and inexpensive process. A selective emitter, meanwhile, involves two different doping levels, with higher doping (${\leq}30{\Omega}/sq$) underneath the grid to achieve good ohmic contact and low doping between the grid in order to minimize the heavy doping effect in the emitter. This study describes the formation of a selective emitter and a nickel silicide seed layer for the front metallization of silicon cells. The contacts were thickened by a plated Ni/Cu two-step metallization process on front contacts. The experimental results showed that the Ni layer via SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) and EDX (Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy) analyses. Finally, a plated Ni/Cu contact solar cell displayed efficiency of 18.10% on a $2{\times}2cm^2$, Cz wafer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.387-390
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• 2002

This paper presents deposition and characterizations of microcrystalline silicon(${\mu}$c-Si:H) films prepared by hot wire chemical vapor deposition at substrate temperature below 300$^{\circ}C$. The SiH$_4$ concentration[F(SiH$_4$)/F(SiH$_4$).+(H$_2$)] is critical parameter for the formation of Si films with microcrystalline phase. At 6% of silane concentration, deposited intrinsic ${\mu}$c-Si:H films shows sufficiently low dark conductivity and high photo sensitivity for solar cell applications. P-type ${\mu}$c-S:H films deposited by Hot-Wire CVD also shows good electrical properties by varying the rate of B$_2$H$\_$6/ to SiH$_4$ gas. The solar cells with structure of Al/nip ${\mu}$c-Si:H/TCO/g1ass was fabricated with single chamber Hot-Wire CVD. About 3% solar efficiency was obtained and applicability of HWCVD for thin film solar cells was proven in this research.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.383-387
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• 2009

Multi-crystalline silicon surface etching without grain-boundary delineation is a challenging task for the fabrication of high efficiency solar cell. The use of sodium hydroxide - sodium hypochlorite (NaOH40% + NaOCl 12%) solution for texturing multi-crystalline silicon wafer surface in solar cell fabrication line is reported in this article. in light current-voltage results, the cells etched in NaOH 40% + NaOCl 12% = 1:2 exhibited higher short circuit current and open circuit voltage than those of the cells etched in NaOH 40% + NaOCl 12% = 1:1 solution. we have obtained 15.19% conversion efficiency in large area(156cm2) multi-Si solar cells etched in NaOH 40% + NaOCl 12% = 1:1 solution.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.86-90
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• 2018

To generate more current in crystalline silicon solar cells, surface texturing is adopted by reducing the surface reflection. Conventionally, random pyramid texturing by the wet chemical process is used for surface texturing in crystalline silicon solar cell. To achieve higher efficiency of solar cells, well ordered inverted pyramid texturing was introduced. Although its complicated process, superior properties such as lower reflectance and recombination velocity can be achieved by optimizing the process. In this study, we investigated optical and passivation properties of inverted pyramid texture. Lifetime, implied-Voc and reflectance were measured with different width and size of the texture. Also, effects of chemical rounding at the valley of the pyramid were observed.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.211-215
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• 2017

Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) and wet etching are employed in existing texturing processes to fabricate solar cells. Laser etching is used for particular purposes such as selective etching for grooves. However, such processes require a higher level of cost and longer processing time and those factors affect the unit cost of each process of fabricating solar cells. As a way to reduce the unit cost of this process of making solar cells, an atmospheric plasma source will be employed in this study for the texturing of crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, we produced the atmospheric plasma source and examined its basic properties. Then, using the prepared atmospheric plasma source, we performed the texturing process of crystalline silicon wafers. The results obtained from texturing processes employing the atmospheric plasma source and employing RIE were examined and compared with each other. The average reflectance of the specimens obtained from the atmospheric plasma texturing process was 7.88 %, while that of specimens obtained from the texturing process employing RIE was 8.04 %. Surface morphologies of textured wafers were examined and measured through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and similar shapes of reactive ion etched wafers were found. The Power Conversion Efficiencies (PCE) of the solar cells manufactured through each process were 16.97 % (atmospheric plasma texturing) and 16.29 % (RIE texturing).

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.332-340
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• 2023

Crystalline silicon solar cells have attracted great attention for their various advantages, such as the availability of raw materials, high-efficiency potential, and well-established processing sequence. Tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) solar cells are widely regarded as one of the most prospective candidates for the next generation of high-performance solar cells because an efficiency of 26% has been achieved in small-area solar cells. Compared to n-type TOPCon solar cells, the photo conversion efficiency (PCE) of p-type TOPCon is slightly higher. The highest PCEs of p-type TOPCon and n-type TOPCon solar cells are 26.0% and 25.8%, respectively. Despite the highest efficiency in small-area cells, limited progress has been achieved in p-type TOPCon solar cells for large are due to their lower carrier lifetime and inferior surface passivation with the boron-doped c-Si wafer. Nevertheless, it is of great importance to promoting the p-type TOPCon technology due to its lower price and well-established manufacturing procedures with slight modifications in the PERC solar cells production lines. The progress in different approaches to increase the efficiencies of p-type TOPCon solar cells has been reported in this review article and is expected to set valuable strategies to promote the passivation technology of p-type TOPCon, which could further increase the efficiency of TOPCon solar cells.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.232-242
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• 2015

Analytical study of surface recombination at the $Si/SiO_2$ interface is carried out in order to set the optimum surface conditions that result in minimum dark base current and maximum open circuit voltage in silicon solar cells. Recombination centers are assumed to form a continuum rather than to be at a single energy level in the energy gap. It is shown that the presence of a hump in the dark I-V characteristics of high efficiency PERL cells is due to the dark current transition from a high surface recombination regime at low voltage to a low surface recombination regime at high voltage. Successful fitting of reported dark I-V characteristics of a typical PERL cell is obtained with several possible combinations of surface parameters including equal electron and hole capture cross sections.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.568-575
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• 1996

The double sided buried contact(DSBC)silicon solar cell processing requires doping of the rear and front grooves with boron and phosphorus respectively. The successful electroless plating of these grooves with the appropriate metals haave been found to depend on the boron conditions for the rear fingers. However, an increased understanding of electroless plating has removed this restriction. Thus the DSBC cells using different boron conditions can be electrolessly plated with ease. This paper presents the recent work done on metallizing the double sided buried contact silicon solar cells with heavily doped boron grooves. The cells results indicate that, the heavier the boron grooves, the poorer the cell performance because of the probable higher metal contact recombination associated with boron grooves.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.38.1-38.1
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• 2010

The trend to thinner crystalline silicon solar wafers in production of solar cells investigates re-evolution of back surface field (BSF) formation. We have studied mechanisms of back contact formation in Al evaporation and screen printed Al paste for Si solar cells by TEM analysis. We observed that Si diffuse into Al during heat up. The Si diffusion process made vacancies in Si wafer. The Al began to seep into the Si wafer (Al spike). During heat down, the Al spike were shrink which causes the doped region (BSF).

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.128.1-128.1
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• 2011

In amorphous silicon and crystalline silicon(a-Si:H/c-Si) heterojuction solar cells, intrinsic hydrogenated amorphous silicon(a-Si:H) films play an important role to passivate the crystalline silicon wafer surfaces. We have studied the correlation between the surface passivation quality and nature of the Si-H bonding at the a-Si:H/c-Si interface. The samples were obtained by VHF-CVD under different deposition conditions. The passivation quality and analysis of all structures studied was performed by means of quasi steady state photoconductance(QSSPC) methods and fourier transform infrared spectrometer(FTIR) measurements respectively.