Opto-electrical approaches for high efficiency and ultra-thin c-Si solar cells

The need for cost reduction requires using less raw material and cost-effective processes without sacrificing the conversion efficiency. For keeping high the generated photo-current, an advanced light trapping scheme for ultra-thin silicon wafers is here proposed, exhibiting absorptances up to 99% of 4n² classical absorption limit for wafer thinner than 35 μm. Such excellent optical performance does not reflect optimal electronic properties due to high recombination rate of the nano-textured surface. Therefore, we propose a passivation method involving both wet etching and high quality passivation coating of the nano-textured surface. For wet etching time longer than 30 s recombination rate of the nano-textured surface reduced more than three time with respect to the un-etched one while keeping the averaged reflectance below 2% (between 300 and 1050 nm). Electrical simulations based on such findings indicate that for wafer thinner than 35 μm conversion efficiency higher than 25% can be achieved.