Present status of buried contact solar cells

Recent years have seen substantially increased performance for laboratory Silicon solar cells. The standard commercial screen-printing cell process sequence appears unable to take advantage of many of these improvements. Consequently, until recently, the efficiency of commercial cells has lagged considerably. The buried contact cell provides a commercial approach able to bridge this gap. During 1990 and 1991, the first results from commercial pilot production of these cells were reported. These confirm that the efficiency advantage of this technology can be realized in commercial production with efficiency 25-35% higher than screen-printing sequences demonstrated. Recent laboratory improvements for the buried contact cell which have resulted in cell efficiencies above 21% are reported. These improvements also appear transferable to commercial production Commercial modules of 20% efficiency may result from this technology