Low Cost Electroplated Ni/Cu Ohmic Contacts for Multicrystalline Si Solar Cells using an Ultrasonic System

In this paper using an electroplating technique, an Ni/Cu structure was fabricated on multicrystalline n⁺Si solar cells to develop an inexpensive metallization method without the degradation of the cell performance. By the application of an ultrasonic system one can obtain a film with the lower surface roughness and the higher quality. The electrical resistivity of the electroplated Ni/Cu was investigated for vacuum annealing at various temperatures. Contact resistance of the Ni/Cu structure on n⁺Si was measured using the Transmission Line Model (TLM) method. An optimum specific contact resistance of 2times10^-5 Omegacm² was obtained for layers annealed at 400 degC for 10 minutes. SEM, XRD and EDX analyses were used to investigate the surface morphology, structure and composition of deposited films