The impact of Ag particle size and rapid thermal processing belt speed on contact resistance of a silicon solar cell

For silicon solar cell, the contact resistance and other series resistance component must be low so that the fill factor (FF) will be high for maximum power extraction. This work measures the contact resistance of mono crystalline silicon cell with respect to micro and nano particle Ag in the metal paste. Nano paste Ag possess lower contact resistance than the micro counterpart. Also in the metal co-firing, the belt speed can impact the contact resistance so that as the belt speed increases, the contact resistance decreases. This stems from shorter dwell time at high temperature as the belt speed increases, and limit the time for oxide to grow at the silicon/metal interface to raise the potential and thereby increase the contact resistance.