• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.505-512
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• 2012

In this study, an inspection system based on an optical scanning mechanism is developed for the inspection of silicon wafers in solar cells. In particular, a structured hybrid illumination system that can satisfy the illumination requirement for the detection of various defects is designed. In the hybrid illumination system, the optimum illumination conditions are selected by considering the design of experiment in master glass and silicon wafer. The illumination conditions available are B-high, BG-high, BR-high, and BGR-high for master glass and R-middle-B-medium for silicon wafers. By using the illumination conditions for silicon wafers, numerous surface defects like pinhole, scratch, and chipping, can be accurately detected. The hybrid illumination system is expected to be widely used for the inspection of silicon wafers in solar cells.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.1 no.1 s.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2005

High-efficiency silicon solar cells have potential applications on mobile electronics and electrical vehicles. The fabrication processes of the high efficiency cells necessitate com placated fabrication precesses and expensive materials. Ti/Pd/Ag metal contact has been used only for limited area In spite of good stability and low contact resistance because of Its expensive material cost and precesses. Screen printed contact formed by Ag paste causes a low fill factor and a high shading loss of commercial solar cells because of high contact resistance and a low aspect ratio. Low cost Ni/Cu metal contact has been formed by using a low cost electroless and electroplating. Nickel silicide formation at the interface enhances stability and reduces the contact resistance resulting In an energy conversion efficiency of $20.2\%\;on\;0.50{\Omega}cm$ FZ wafer. Tapered contact structure has been applied to large area solar cells with $6.7\times6.7cm^2$ in order to reduce power losses by the front contact The tapered front metal contact Is easily formed by the electroplating technique producing $45cm^2$ solar cells with an efficiency of $21.4\%$ on $21.4\%\;on\;2{\Omega}cm$ FZ wafer.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.225-232
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• 2011

Reactive ion etching (RIE) technique for maskless surface texturing of mc-silicon solar wafers has been applied and succeed in fabricating a grass-like black-silicon with an average reflectance of $4{\pm}1%$ in a wavelength range of 300~1,200 nm. In order to investigate the optimized texturing conditions for mass production of high quantum efficiency solar cell Surface characteristics such as the spatial distribution of average reflectance, micrscopic surface morphology and minority carrier lifetime were monitored for samples from saw-damaged $15.6{\times}15.6\;cm^2$ bare wafer to key-processed wafers as well as the mc-Si solar cells. We observed that RIE textured wafers reveal lower average reflectance along from center to edges by 1% and referred the origin to the non-uniform surface structures with a depth of 2 times deeper and half-maximum width of 3 times. Samples with anti-reflection coating after forming emitter layer also revealed longer minority carrier lifetime by 40% for the edge compared to wafer center due to size effects. As results, mc-Si solar cells with RIE-textured surface also revealed higher efficiency by 2% and better external quantum efficiency by 15% for edge positions with higher height.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.493-493
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• 2014

The manufacturing cost of thin-film photovoltics can potentially be lowered by minimizing the amount of a semiconductor material used to fabricate devices. Thin-film solar cells are typically only a few micrometers thick, whereas crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafer solar cells are $180{\sim}300\mu}m$ thick. As such, thin-film layers do not fully absorb incident light and their energy conversion efficiency is lower compared with that of c-Si wafer solar cells. Therefore, effective light trapping is required to realize commercially viable thin-film cells, particularly for indirect-band-gap semiconductors such as c-Si. An emerging method for light trapping in thin film solar cells is the use of metallic nanostructures that support surface plasmons. Plasmon-enhanced light absorption is shown to increase the cell photocurrent in many types of solar cells, specifically, in c-Si thin-film solar cells and in poly-Si thin film solar cell. By proper engineering of these structures, light can be concentrated and coupled into a thin semiconductor layer to increase light absorption. In many cases, silver (Ag) nanoparticles (NP) are formed either on the front surface or on the rear surface on the cells. In case of poly-Si thin film solar cells, Ag NPs are formed on the rear surface of the cells due to longer wavelengths are not perfectly absorbed in the active layer on the first path. In our cells, shorter wavelengths typically 300~500 nm are also not effectively absorbed. For this reason, a new concept of plasmonic nanostructure which is NPs formed both the front - and the rear - surface is worth testing. In this simulation Al NPs were located onto glass because Al has much lower parasitic absorption than other metal NPs. In case of Ag NP, it features parasitic absorption in the optical frequency range. On the other hand, Al NP, which is non-resonant metal NP, is characterized with a higher density of conduction electrons, resulting in highly negative dielectric permittivity. It makes them more suitable for the forward scattering configuration. In addition to this, Ag NP is located on the rear surface of the cell. Ag NPs showed good performance enhancement when they are located on the rear surface of our cells. In this simulation, Al NPs are located on glass and Ag NP is located on the rear Si surface. The structure for the simulation is shown in figure 1. Figure 2 shows FDTD-simulated absorption graphs of the proposed and reference structures. In the simulation, the front of the cell has Al NPs with 70 nm radius and 12.5% coverage; and the rear of the cell has Ag NPs with 157 nm in radius and 41.5% coverage. Such a structure shows better light absorption in 300~550 nm than that of the reference cell without any NPs and the structure with Ag NP on rear only. Therefore, it can be expected that enhanced light absorption of the structure with Al NP on front at 300~550 nm can contribute to the photocurrent enhancement.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.450-453
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• 2012

In crystalline solar cells, the substrate itself constitutes a large portion of the fabrication cost as it is derived from semiconductor ingots grown in costly high temperature processes. Thinner wafer substrates allow some cost saving as more wafers can be sliced from a given ingot, although technological limitations in slicing or sawing of wafers off an ingot, as well as the physical strength of the sliced wafers, put a lower limit on the substrate thickness. Complementary to these economical and techno-physical points of view, a device operation point of view of the substrate thickness would be useful. With this in mind, BC-BJ Si and GaAs solar cells are compared one to one by means of the Medici device simulation, with a particular emphasis on the substrate thickness. Under ideal conditions of 0.6 ${\mu}m$ photons entering the 10 ${\mu}m$-wide BC-BJ solar cells at the normal incident angle (${\theta}=90^{\circ}$), GaAs is about 2.3 times more efficient than Si in terms of peak cell power output: 42.3 $mW{\cdot}cm^{-2}$ vs. 18.2 $mW{\cdot}cm^{-2}$. This strong performance of GaAs, though only under ideal conditions, gives a strong indication that this material could stand competitively against Si, despite its known high material and process costs. Within the limitation of the minority carrier recombination lifetime value of $5{\times}10^{-5}$ sec used in the device simulation, the solar cell power is known to be only weakly dependent on the substrate thickness, particularly under about 100 ${\mu}m$, for both Si and GaAs. Though the optimum substrate thickness is about 100 ${\mu}m$ or less, the reduction in the power output is less than 10% from the peak values even when the substrate thickness is increased to 190 ${\mu}m$. Thus, for crystalline Si and GaAs with a relatively long recombination lifetime, extra efforts to be spent on thinning the substrate should be weighed against the expected actual gain in the solar cell output power.

• 한국신재생에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.89-93
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• 2005

A rear contact solar cell has a potential merit of efficiency improvement by a low shading loss in front surface. a simplified module assembly. and a higher packing density. Among the rear contact solar cells. MWT. metallizationl wrap through MWT solar cells that have the bus bars on the back side and the front side metallization is connected to the back through metal filled laser fired holes in the silicon wafer. This approach has the advantages of a much more uniform appearance. The first fabrication of MWT using a multicrystalline silicon modules in our group showed $12.28\%$ on $125mm{\times}125mm$ active area.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.367-370
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• 2009

It is important to reduce a reflection of light as a solar cell is device that directly converts the energy of solar radiation to electrical energy in oder to improve efficiency of solar cells. The antireflection coating has proven effective in providing substantial increase in solar cell efficiency. This paper investigates the formation of thin film PSi(porous silicon) layer on the surface of crystalline silicon substrates without other ARC(antirefiection coating) layers. On the other hand the formation of $SO_{2}/SiN_x$ ARC layers on the surface of crystalline silicon substrates. After that, the structure of PSi and $SO_2/SiN_x$ ARC was investigated by SEM and reflectance. The formation of PSi layer and $SO_{2}/SiN_x$ ARC layers on the textured silicon wafer result about 5% in the wavelength region from 0.4 to $1.0{\mu}m$. It is achieved on the textured crystalline silicon solar cell that each efficiency is 14.43%, 16.01%.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.6-16
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• 2024

The efficiency of silicon solar cells is approaching a theoretical limit referred to as 'the state of the art'. Consequently, maintaining efficiency is more productive than pursuing improvements the last room for limiting efficiency. One of the primary considerations in silicon module conservation is the occurrence of failures and degradation. Degradation can be mitigated during the cell manufacturing stage, unlike physical and spontaneous failure. It is mostly because the chemical reaction is triggered by the carrier generation of thermal and light injection, an inherent aspect of the solar cell environment. Therefore, numerous researchers and cell manufacturers are engaged in implementing mitigation strategies based on the physical degradation mechanism.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.244-244
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• 2010

Doping process of crystalline silicon solar cell process is very important which is as influential on efficiency of solar. Doping process consists of pre -deposition and diffusion. Each of these processes is important in the process temperature and process time. Through these process conditions variable, p-n junction depth can be controled to low and high. In this paper, we studied a optimized doping pre-deposition temperature for high solar cell efficiency. Using a $200{\mu}m$ thickness multi-crystalline silicon wafer, fixed conditions are texture condition, sheet resistance($50\;{\Omega}/sq$), ARC thickness(80nm), metal formation condition and edge isolation condition. The three variable conditions of pre-deposition temperature are $790^{\circ}C$, $805^{\circ}C$ and $820^{\circ}C$. In the $790^{\circ}C$ pre-deposition temperature, we achieved a best solar cell efficiency of 16.2%. Through this experiment result, we find a high efficiency condition in a low pre-deposition temperature than the high pre-deposition temperature. We optimized a pre-deposition temperature for high solar cell efficiency.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.5-9
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• 2010

Recently, the important issues of solar cell are low cost and high efficiency. Making low cost and high efficiency solar cell, there are many effects to development of inexpensive wafer, simplify process and improve optical, electrical properties. In this the study, the 2 step texturing method using micro blaster was developed to decrease reflection of incident lights. Air bridge electrode structure is suggested to expand the effective surface area and decrease the series resistance of finger electrode. The effects of 1 step texturing and 2 step texturing by micro blaster are compared. Reflectance of 1 step and 2 step texturing are measured 28.7% and 25.5%, respectively. The reflectance of 2 step texturing sample is lower about 3.2% than 1 step textured sample.