• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.27-30
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• 2018

The dependency of the electrical characteristics of silicon solar-cells on the depth of damaged layer induced by wire-sawing process was investigated. To compare cell efficiency with residual sawing damage, silicon solar-cells were fabricated by using as-sawn wafers having different depth of saw damage without any damaged etching process. The damaged layer induced by wire-sawing process in silicon bulk intensely influenced the value of fill factor on solar cells, degrading fill factor to 57.20%. In addition, the photovoltaic characteristics of solar cells applying texturing process shows that although the initial depth of saw-damage induced by wire-sawing process was different, the value of short-circuit current, fill-factor, and power-conversion-efficiency have an almost same, showing ~17.4% of cell efficiency. It indicated that the degradation of solar-cell efficiency induced by wire-sawing process could be prevented by eliminating all damaged layer through sufficient pyramid-surface texturing process.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.98-103
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• 2008

The glass for crystalline PV module fabrication should have high thermal and mechanical resistance to environmental also have high transparency. In this paper, we analyze the optical characteristics of glasses for photovoltaic module application. The transmittance of several glasses are measured. The effects of texturing on low iron glass, glass thickness, anti-reflective glass, photocatalyst-treated glass and special glass are compared each other. Then this will give some information to select PV glass for manufacturing. The detailed analysis is described in the following paper.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.50.1-50.1
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• 2009

Transparent conductive oxides (TCOs) play an important role in thin-film solar cells in terms of low cost and performance improvement. Al-doped ZnO (AZO) is a very promising material for thin-film solar cellfabrication because of the wide availability of its constituent raw materials and its low cost. In this study, AZO films were prepared by low pressurechemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) using trimethylaluminum (TMA), diethylzinc(DEZ), and water vapor. In order to improve the absorbance of light, atypical surface texturing method is wet etching of front electrode using chemical solution. Alternatively, LPCVD can create a rough surface during deposition. This "self-texturing" is a very useful technique, which can eliminate additional chemical texturing process. The introduction of a TMA doping source has a strong influence on resistivity and the diffusion of light in a wide wavelength range.The haze factor of AZO up to a value of 43 % at 600 nm was achieved without an additional surface texturing process by simple TMA doping. The use of AZO TCO resulted in energy conversion efficiencies of 7.7 % when it was applied to thep-i-n a-Si:H thin film solar cell, which was comparable to commercially available fluorine doped tin oxide ($SnO_2$:F).

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.130-133
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• 2019

The Ag crystallite formed during the formation of the front electrode forms a contact between the metal of the electrode and the emitter of the cell. Contact between the electrode and emitter plays an important role in collecting electrons generated by the solar cell. Therefore, Ag crystallite formation is an important factor. In order for solar cells to have good characteristics, it is important to understand the factors influencing the Ag crystallite formation. Factors affecting the formation of Ag crystallites include Si emitter, morphology, Si defect and firing temperature. The influence of surface morphology on Ag crystallite formation was confirmed throughout this study. In the case of fine texturing, the Ag crystallites were formed at the pointed parts. The finer the texturing, the sharper areas and more Ag crystallites were formed. This was confirmed by SEM image and FF calculation.

• 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.

• 한국태양에너지학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.245-248
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• 2011

Many researches have been carried out to improve light absorption in the crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication. The rear reflection is applied to increase the path length of light, resulting in the light absorption enhancement and thus the efficiency improvement mainly due to increase in short circuit current. In this paper, we manufactured the silicon solar cell using the mono crystalline silicon wafers with $156{\times}156mm^2$, 0.5~3.0 ${\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ of resistivity and p-type. After saw damage removal, the dielectric film ($SiN_x$)on the back surface was deposited, followed by surface texturing in the KOH solution. It resulted in single-side texturing wafer. Then the dielectric film was removed in the HF solution. The silicon wafers were doped with phosphorus by $POCl_3$ with the sheet resistance 50 ${\Omega}/{\Box}$ and then the silicon nitride was deposited on the front surface by the PECVD with 80nm thickness. The electrodes were formed by screen-printing with Ag and Al paste for front and back surface, respectively. The reflectance and transmittance for the single-sided and double-sided textured wafers were compared. The double-sided textured wafer showed higher reflectance and lower transmittance at the long wavelength region, compared to single-sided. The completed crystalline silicon solar cells with different back surface texture showed the conversion efficiency of 17.4% for the single sided and 17.3% for the double sided. The efficiency improvement with single-sided textured solar cell resulted from reflectance increase on back surface and light absorption enhancement.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.73-77
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• 2014

To investigate the effect of metal back-reflective layers (MBLs) on the performance of GaAs solar cells, we fabricated GaAs solar cells on Al and Ag metal layers using the transfer printing technique. We also investigated the effect of MBL texturing on the performance of transfer printed GaAs solar cells. Transfer printed solar cells with MBLs exhibited improved photovoltaic performance compared to solar cells without MBLs due to light trapping. We demonstrated GaAs solar cells with MBLs on a flexible substrate and performed systematic bending tests. All the measured characteristics of solar cells showed little change in performance.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.649-653
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• 2010

In this paper, double texturization of multi crystalline silicon solar cells was studied with laser and reactive ion etching (RIE). In the case of multi crystalline silicon wafers, chemical etching has problems in producing a uniform surface texture. Thus various etching methods such as laser and dry texturization have been studied for multi crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, laser texturization with an Nd:$YVO_4$ green laser was performed first to get the proper hole spacing and $300{\mu}m$ was found to be the most proper value. Laser texturization on crystalline silicon wafers was followed by damage removal in acid solution and RIE to achieve double texturization. This study showed that double texturization on multi crystalline silicon wafers with laser firing and RIE resulted in lower reflectance, higher quantum yield and better efficiency than that process without RIE. However, RIE formed sharp structures on the silicon wafer surfaces, which resulted in 0.8% decrease of fill factor at solar cell characterization. While chemical etching makes it difficult to obtain a uniform surface texture for multi crystalline silicon solar cells, the process of double texturization with laser and RIE yields a uniform surface structure, diminished reflectance, and improved efficiency. This finding lays the foundation for the study of low-cost, high efficiency multi crystalline silicon solar cells.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.102-108
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• 2018

A glass-texturing technique was developed for photovoltaic (PV) module cover glass; periodic honeycomb textures were formed by using a conventional lithography technique and diluted hydrogen fluoride etching solutions. The etching conditions were optimized for three different types of textured structures. In contrast to a flat glass substrate, the textured glasses were structured with etched average surface angles of $31-57^{\circ}$, and large aspect ratios of 0.17-0.47; by using a finite difference time-domain simulation, we show that these textured surfaces increase the amount of scattered light and reduce reflectance on the glass surface. In addition, the optical transmittance of the textured glass was markedly improved by up to 95% for wavelengths ranging from 400 to 1100 nm. Furthermore, applying the textured structures to the cover glass of the PV module with heterojunction with intrinsic thin-layer crystalline silicon solar cells resulted in improvements in the short-circuit current density and module efficiency from 39 to $40.2mA/cm^2$ and from 21.65% to 22.41%, respectively. Considering these results, the proposed method has the potential to further strengthen the industrial and technical competitiveness of crystalline silicon solar cells.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.496-500
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• 2003

A low-cost, large area, random, maskless texturing scheme independent of crystal orientation is expected to significantly impact terrestrial photovoltaic technology. We investigated silicon surface microstructures formed by reactive ion etching (RIE) in Multi-Hollow cathode system. Desirable texturing effect has been achieved when radio-frequency (rf) power of about 20 Watt per one hollow cathode glow is applied for our RF Multi-Hollow cathode system. The black silicon etched surface shows almost zero reflectance in the visible region as well as in near IR region. The etched silicon surface is covered by columnar microstructures with diameters from 50 to 100 nm and depth of about 500 nm. We have successfully achieved 11.7% efficiency of mono-crystalline silicon solar cell and 10.2% multi-crystalline silicon solar cell.