“Camocell” technology: a new surface texturing process for high efficiency color-matched silicon solar cells

This paper introduces a simple approach for producing textured surfaces with a wide range of colors on single and multi-crystalline silicon wafers. We call the new technology the “Camocell” process. Preliminary work on Camocell process has produced textured surfaces with black, green, blue, brown, gold, gray, and a combination of other colors on both single and multi-crystalline Si wafers. The colors obtained generally have an earth tone appearance which is highly desirable for fabricating aesthetic solar cells in building integration or camouflaged solar cells for remote powering of field instruments. Using the new approach, we can achieve either a uniform or a variable color pattern on each wafer as desired. Due to inherent superior physical properties of the textured surfaces produced using the Camocell process, we believe the technology could lead to the fabrication of high efficiency Si-based solar cells of all colors