EVALUATION OF HIGH-EFFICIENCY mc-Si CELL PROCESSING TECHNOLOGIES REGARDING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT AND INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY

摘要

Due to the impressive growth rate of the photovoltaic industry in the last years, it has become of increasing importance to assess solar cell production processes for its environmental impact. This work compares in detail the environmental impact of equipment, consumed materials and waste treatment in several high-efficiency mc-Si cell processing sequences developed within the European project Topsicle. Amongst others, we critically analysed the advanced isotextured process for up to 17% efficient cells based on screen-printing proposed by ECN, the angled buried contact (ABC) process and a hybrid buried contact / screen printing process, both proposed by the University of Konstanz. The evaluated data is compared with that of a state-of-the-art industrial screen-printing process. The publicly available results might serve as a useful decision tool for planning future solar cell production lines with respect to environmental impact and industrial applicability.