Increased Front Surface Recombination by Rear-Side Laser Processing on Thin Silicon Solar Cells

Author

Haase, Frerk ; Kajari-Schroder, Sarah ; Romer, Udo ; Neubert, T. ; Petermann, J. ; Peibst, Robby ; Harder, Nils-Peter ; Brendel, Rolf

Author_Institution

Inst. for Solar Energy Res. Hamelin, Emmerthal, Germany

Volume

3

Issue

3

fYear

2013

fDate

Jul-13

Firstpage

976

Lastpage

984

Abstract

We show the degradation of the front surface passivation by rear-side laser processing of thin silicon solar cells when using a laser with a pulse length of 8 ps. 45-μm-thick back-contact back-junction monocrystalline silicon solar cells show an energy conversion efficiency of 18.8% without rear-side laser processing, whereas they show only 7.5% with an additional rear-side laser process step for contact separation. This low efficiency is due to the degradation of the front surface passivation, which is confirmed by quantum efficiency measurements. The internal quantum efficiency at short wavelength is 0.88 without laser processing, whereas it is only 0.33 with the rear-side laser process step.

Keywords

laser materials processing; passivation; silicon; solar cells; surface recombination; Si; back-contact back-junction; contact separation; energy conversion efficiency; front surface passivation; front surface recombination; internal quantum efficiency; rear-side laser processing; size 45 mum; thin silicon solar cells; Back-contact back-junction (BC BJ) cells; device modeling; laser processing; surface recombination;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photovoltaics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

2156-3381

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JPHOTOV.2013.2261573

Filename

6518162