Abstract :
In this paper, we report on the effect of chemical vapor etching-based porous silicon (PS) on the performance of multicrystalline silicon
solar cells performed via deep n+/p junction-type structures. Chemical vapor etching of silicon leads to the formation of porous
silicon (PS) nanostructures that dramatically decrease the surface reflectivity from 30% to about 8%, and increase the minority carrier
diffusion lengths from 90 lm to 170 lm. As a result, the short-circuit current density was improved by more than 20% and the fill factor
(FF) by about a 10%. An enhancement of the photovoltaic conversion energy efficiency of the solar cells from 7% to 10% was observed.
This low-cost PS formation process can be applied in the photovoltaic cell technology as a standard procedure.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
