Dip Coating Process. Silicon Sheet Growth Development for the Large-Area Silicon Sheet Task of the Low-Cost Silicon Solar Array Project. Quarterly Report No. 6, March 22, 1977--June 24, 1977

摘要

The objective of this research program is to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of producing solar-cell-quality sheet silicon by coating one surface of carbonized ceramic substrates with a thin layer of large-grain polycrystalline silicon from the melt. Significant progress was made in silicon on ceramic (SOC) solar cell performance. SOC cells having 1 cm exp 2 active areas demonstrated measured conversion efficiencies as high as 7.2 percent. Typical open circuit voltages (V/sub oc/) and short circuit current densities (J/sub sc/) were 0.51 volt and 20 mA/cm exp 2 respectively. Since the active surface of these solar cells is a highly reflective ''as-grown'' surface, one can expect improvement in J/sub sc/ after an anti-reflection (AR) coating is applied. It is significant that single-crystal comparison cells, also measured without benefit of an AR coating, had efficiencies in the 8.5 percent range with typical V/sub oc/'s and J/sub sc/'s of 0.54 volt and 23 mA/cm exp 2 , respectively. Therefore, improvement in cell design and junction diffusion techniques should increase the efficiency of both the SOC and single-crystal cells. During this quarter the dip coating facility was inadvertently contaminated, but has since been restored to a purity level exceeding its original state. With this facility, silicon coatings were grown with a single-crystal seed attached to the substrate. Single-crystal silicon was not forthcoming, but the results were nonetheless encouraging. Several of the carbon coating types tried appear promising, including one which has high purity and can be applied uniformly by swab or airbrush. (ERA citation 03:000426)