Fabrication and properties of mechanically grooved silicon solar cells with buried contact Cu electrode

摘要

Mechanically grooved silicon solar cells with buried contact copper electrode were attempted. In order to groove a simple mechanical grooving system was home-made, in which synchronous motors in hard disc driver (HDD), audio amplifier, signal generator were used. For the anti-reflection films sputtering condition for SiN_x films was optimized. With increasing input power, pressure, index of refraction of the films increased so that a very low etching rate of 0.8 nm/min could be achieved with a condition of Ar and N_2 flow rate of 5 SCCM, input power of 300 W and sputtering pressure of 1 × 10~(-2) torr. Annealing condition for the formation of nickel silicie from electroless plated Ni-P layer was optimized as well as plating condition of copper electrode. However, the conversion efficiency of the BCSC in this study is 3.6% which is unexpectedly small. It seems that the reason for the low efficiency is due to short circuit forming in the lancet of the pyramid.