Advanced manufacturing concepts for crystalline silicon solar cells

Author

Nijs, Johan F. ; Szlufcik, Jozef ; Poortmans, Jozef ; Sivoththaman, S. ; Mertens, Robert P.

Author_Institution

IMEC, Leuven, Belgium

Volume

46

Issue

10

fYear

1999

fDate

10/1/1999 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1948

Lastpage

1969

Abstract

An overview is given concerning current industrial technologies, near future improvements and medium term developments in the field of industrially implementable crystalline silicon solar cell fabrication. The paper proves that considerable improvements are still possible, both in efficiency and in production cost. The paper also proves that a lot of effort is being put worldwide on thinner substrates and on thin-film crystalline silicon cells deposited on cheap carriers, in order to save in substrate cost and in order to gain more independence from availability problems of silicon feedback

Keywords

elemental semiconductors; reviews; semiconductor device manufacture; semiconductor thin films; silicon; solar cells; substrates; Si; advanced manufacturing concepts; cheap carriers; crystalline Si solar cells; efficiency improvement; industrial technologies; production cost; solar cell fabrication; thin-film crystalline Si cells; thinner substrates; Costs; Crystallization; Fabrication; Manufacturing industries; Photovoltaic cells; Production; Semiconductor thin films; Silicon; Substrates; Textile industry;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/16.791983

Filename

791983