A Micro-Droplet Etching Approach for Texturization of Diamond Wire Sawn Multi-Crystalline Silicon Wafers
At a Glance
Section titled āAt a Glanceā| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2017-01-01 |
| Journal | EU PVSEC |
| Authors | Z. Xin, H. Chen, Longyan Gong, Song Jin, X. Ye |
| Citations | 1 |
Abstract
Section titled āAbstractāDevelopment of diamond wire sawing of multicrystalline silicon solar cell wafers has been inhibited by its incompetence with conventional acidic wet etching texturization process. A novel texturization method based on localized etching by micro-droplet of HF-HNO3-H2O etchant on wafers has been developed. The micro-droplet is generated by controlled condensation of thermal vapor from a HF-HNO3-H2O bath. Micron scale etch-pit type surface textures are made by applying the micro-droplet etching (MDE) process to diamond wire sawn mc-Si wafers. The light reflectivity is reduced to ~18%, and the sawmarks are removed. A few tens of full size DWS mc-Si wafer samples were manually MDE textured, and send to a solar cell fabrication line along with ordinary slurry sawn wafers, without any adjustment of processing parameters for the MDE textured samples. Encouraging I-V characteristics of the MDE textured samples have been obtained. Both Jsc and Voc are found to increase as compared to the reference alkaline textured samples, and up to 0.56% absolute increase of average energy conversion efficiency is obtained.