On the Ink Jetting of Full Front Ag Gridlines for Cost-Effective Metallization of Si Solar Cells

Author

Ebong, Abasifreke ; Cooper, Ian B. ; Rounsaville, Brian ; Rohatgi, Ajeet ; Dovrat, Miki ; Kritchman, E. ; Brusilovsky, D. ; Benichou, Axel

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

Volume

33

Issue

5

fYear

2012

fDate

5/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

637

Lastpage

639

Abstract

In this letter, we report on the ink-jet full gridline cells with three different Ag dosages (70, 90, and 130 mg) on 75-Ω/sq emitters. We observed that the open-circuit voltage (V_OC), short-circuit current density (J_SC), and fill factor (FF ) were highest for the 130-mg dose and decrease thereafter as the Ag dosage decreases. Because of the decreased FF with decreasing Ag dosage, the efficiency followed the same trend. However, we demonstrated, for the first time, fully ink-jetted front Ag gridlines with an FF of 0.765 and efficiency of 18.4% on 239-cm² commercial CZ wafers with a sheet resistance of 75 Ω/sq . Noteworthy is the achievement of 17.8% efficiency with only 70 mg of Ag, which is ~ 68% less Ag than that used on cells with screen-printed gridlines. This represents a Ag cost saving of ~ $0.245 per 6-inch wafer compared to the screen-printed counterpart with 220 mg of Ag.

Keywords

current density; elemental semiconductors; ink jet printing; metallisation; short-circuit currents; silicon; silver; solar cells; Ag; Ag dosages; Ag gridlines; Si; Si solar cells; commercial CZ wafers; cost-effective metallization; ink jetting; open-circuit voltage; screen-printed gridlines; sheet resistance; short-circuit current density; Etching; Glass; Ink; Metallization; Photovoltaic cells; Resistance; Silicon; High-efficiency solar cells; ink-jetted cells; silicon solar cells;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2012.2186553

Filename

6168215