Manufacturing of crystalline Si

solar cells

First Photovoltaic Devices

Edmond Becquerel in the year of1839.

Generated electricity by illuminating an electrode with
different types of light, including sunlight.
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Early Silicon Solar Cells

(a) Cast ingot showing
natural junction formed by
impurity segregation during
melting; (b) photovoltaic
device cut perpendicular to
junction; (c) device cut
parallel to junction; (d) top
surface of device cut parallel
to junction.

In 1941, before even this limited understanding of

dopants, silicon photovoltaic devices based on the natural
junctions were described.

First modern silicon cell

Dual rear contact structure.

1954 by Chapin, Fuller and Pearson.
Efficiency of ~ 6%.
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Silicon Wafers and Substrates

Refining Silicon

Metallugical grade silicon (MG-Si ~98% pure): The silica is

reduced (oxygen removed) through a reaction with carbon
and heating to 1500-2000 C in an electrode arc furnace.
Powdered MG-Si is reacted with anhydrous HCl at 300 C in
a fluidised bed reactor to form SiHCl3
Siemens process: the pure SiHCl3 is reacted with hydrogen
at 1100C for ~200 300 hours to produce a very pure
form of silicon
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Design of p/n junctions

Solar cells can tolerate higher levels of impurity than
integrated circuits fabrication and there are proposals
for alternative processes to create a "solar-grade"
silicon.

Single Crystalline Silicon

Single-crystalline wafers typically

have better material parameters
but are also more expensive.
In solar cells the preferred
orientation is <100> as this can
be easily textured to produce
pyramids that reduce the surface
reflectivity. However, some
crystal growth processes such as
dendritic web <111> produce
material with other orientations.
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Single Crystalline Silicon

Single crystalline silicon is usually grown as a large

cylindrical ingot producing circular or semi-square solar cells.
The semi-square cell started out circular but has had the
edges cut off so that a number of cells can be more
efficiently packed into a rectangular module.
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Czochralski (CZ) Silicon

Schematic of CZ Si growth
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Czochralski (CZ) Silicon

Top of Czochralski ingot.

The bottom cylindrical
section has been cut off to
make wafers.
Such "tops and tails" left
over from growing the
semiconductor industry are
a large source of silicon
supply for the photovoltaic
industry.
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Preparation of multicrystalline Si wafer

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Preparation of multicrystalline Si wafer

Techniques for the production of multicrystalline silicon are much

simple, and therefore cheaper, compromising with materials
quality.
Grain boundaries introduce high localized regions of recombination.
Grain boundaries reduce solar cell performance by blocking carrier
flows and providing shunting paths for current flow across the p-n
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junction.

Wafer Slicing

Large multicrystalline silicon block being sliced up into

smaller bricks.
Brick of multicrystalline silicon cut from slab and before
being cut up into wafers.

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Wafer Slicing

Silicon brick being sliced up into wafers.

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Solid State Diffusion for emitter

Solid state diffusion: Heating the wafer at a high temperature in

an atmosphere containing dopant atoms causes some of the
atoms to be incorporated into the top surface of the wafer.
In silicon solar cell: formation of n-type emitter layer on the ptype base.

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Cell Fabrication Technologies

Screen-printed Solar Cells

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Screen-printed Solar Cells

Screen-printed solar cells were first developed

in the 1970's.
As such, they are the best established, most
mature solar cell fabrication technology, and
screen-printed solar cells currently dominate
the market for terrestrial photovoltaic
modules.
The key advantage of screen-printing is the
relative simplicity of the process.
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Schematic process flow

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Schematic process flow

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Schematic process flow

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Schematic process flow

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Some Key Process Steps

Phosphorous Diffusion (n+ emitter)

Shallower emitters (reduce dead-layer), thus improving the cell blue

response.
Selective emitters with higher doping below the metal contacts no
commercial production yet.

Surface Texturing to Reduce Reflection

Single crystalline: by etching pyramids.

Texture multicrystalline materials:
mechanical texturing of the wafer surface with cutting tools or
lasers;
isotropic chemical etching based on defects;
isotropic chemical etching with a photolithographic mask;
plasma etching.

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Some Key Process Steps

Antireflection Coatings (ARC) and Fire Through Contacts

Edge Isolation

Commonly used: titanium dioxide (TiO2) or silicon nitride (SiNx).

ARC are particularly beneficial for multicrystalline material that cannot
be easily textured.
Improve the electrical properties of the cell by surface passivation.
Metal contacts can fire though ARC and bond to the underlying silicon.
Plasma etching, laser cutting, or masking the border to prevent a
diffusion from occurring around the edge in the first place.

Rear Contact

In most production, the rear contact is simply made using a Al/Ag grid
printed in a single step.
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Front view of a completed screen-printed solar cell.

As the cell is manufactured from a multicrystalline substrate,
the different grain orientations can be clearly seen.
The square shape of a multicrystalline substrate simplifies the
packing of cells into a module.
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Buried Contact Solar Cells

Metal contact is buried in a laser-formed

groove inside the silicon solar cell.
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Advantages of Buried Contact

Solar Cells

High transparency: Shading loss improves to 2-3% from

screen printed solar cell of 10 to 15% improve Jsc.
A large metal height-to-width aspect ratio low parasitic
resistance losses (emitter resistance loss).
No need very high emitter doping (or dead layer)
improve Voc.
A higher efficiency solar cell technology results in lower
cost electricity.

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PERL Solar Cells

Passivated emitter
with rear locally
diffused.
efficiencies
approaching 25%
under the standard
AM1.5 spectrum.

The passivated emitter refers to the high quality oxide at the

front surface that significantly lowers surface recombining.
The rear is locally diffused only at the metal contacts to
minimize recombination at the rear while maintaining good
electrical contact.
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Rear Contact Solar Cells

Making Solar Panel

Rear contact solar

cells achieve
potentially higher
efficiency by moving
all or part of the front
contact grids to the
rear of the device.
The higher efficiency
potentially results
from the reduced
shading on the front
of the cell.
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A case study of bulk Si solar

cell production line

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Source Material

One source is off cuts and

scrap material from the
semiconductor industry.

Wafer scraps from the

production line are recycled
for growing new ingot.
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Growing ingots

The tub has to withstand the

melting point of silicon at
1415 C.

Loading the growth tub into

the furnace.
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Sawing the Ingot into Bricks

The large silicon ingot is sawn into more managable

bricks.
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Wafer Slicing

The wires are covered with slurry and are wound around
the drums. When running the drums spin at high speed
and the silicon bricks are pushed down from the top.
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Texturing

Wafers in cassettes for

texturing in sodium
hydroxide.
Spin dry is applied.
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Emitter Diffusion

The wafers are then put in a belt

furnace to diffuse a small amount of
phosphorous.
The wafers travels in diffusion
furnace for roughly an hour.
Clean and dried.

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Edge Isolation

Removes the phosphorous

diffusion around the edge of
the cell so that the front
emitter is electrically isolated
from the cell rear.
A common way to achieve
this is to stack the wafers on
top of each other then
plasma etch using CF4 and
O2.
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Anti-Reflection
Coating

Before coating

After coating

An antireflection of silicon
nitride is typically deposited
using chemical vapor
deposition process (CVD).
large amounts of hydrogen
(SixNy:H).
3SiH4 + 4NH3 -> Si3N4 + 12H2
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Screen-Print Front

Silver paste is forced through a patterned screen.

Screen printer in operation: wafer are under the printer.
After printing, heating @200 C to evaporate off the
organic binders in the paste.

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Screen-Print Rear Al

The rear is printed in two parts.

A thick layer of aluminum past covers most of the cell and
provides a back surface field.
Drying the aluminum paste.
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Screen-Print Rear Silver

Screen printing the silver on the rear.

Unloading the final dry process.
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Metal Firing

A firing process at high temperature bonds

the Al / silver to the silicon.
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Testing

Testing the cells and putting them into modules.

After the cells are tested they are sorted into
bins.
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Module Manufacture

After the cell is finished it

strips are added.
Individual solar cells are
protected from the weather by
encapsulating into a module.
Each cell is only around 0.5
volts, to obtain sufficient
voltage the cell are connected
together in series using flat
wires called tabs.

Solar Cell Manufacture

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